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JOHN RUSKIN. 



ESSAYS AND LETTERS 

SELECTED FROM TUB WRITINGS OF 

JOHN RUSKIN 

WITH 

Introductory Interpretations and Annotations 



This fair tree Jgdrasil of Human Art can only flourish 
when its dew is Affection ; its air, Devotion ; the rock of its 
roots, Patience ; and its sunshine, God. — Laws of Fesole. 



EDITED BY 



MRS. LOIS G. HUFFORD 

TEACHER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL OF 
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 



JUL 2 1894 






BOSTON, U.S.A. 

PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY 

1894 



xp tf 



Copyright, 1894 
Jy LOIS G. HUFFORD 



ALL RIGHTS RESEK\ P.I1 



/t.-rtZ<?S~ 




PREFACE. 



If it be true that " Literature is a criticism of life," then 
the writings of John Ruskin deserve to rank high. 

The papers included in this volume are characteristic 
expressions of Mr. Ruskin's views on social questions and 
ethics as applied to all life. His searching examination of 
conduct and the motives that control the average man in 
private and public life tend to awaken dissatisfaction with 
low ideals, and to elevate the standards of personal and 
social virtue. 

The main introduction is intended to give briefly 
(i) Mr. Ruskin's theory of life and art ; (2) a sketch of 
his own life showing what influences contributed to the 
formation of his character ; and (3) the characteristics of 
his literary style. 

The special introductions are intended as a concise 
summary of the individual essays and letters. 

The text used is that of Mr. Ruskin's authorized English 
edition. 

It is hoped that this introduction to one of the most 
stimulating writers of the present century will prove so 
helpful and inspiring as to lead to a more intimate 
acquaintance. 



L. G. H. 



Indianapolis, Ind., 
May 22, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction vii 

List of Collected Works xxvii 

Bibliographical References ...... xxix 

Sesame and Lilies : — 

Introductory ......... 3 

Of Kings' Treasuries 8 

Annotations 60 

Of Queens' Gardens 65 

Annotations 104 

Unto this Last: — 

Introductory 109 

Roots of Honor ........ 114 

Veins of Wealth 133 

*■— Qui Judicatis Terram ....... 147 

Annotations 1G7 

Fors Clavigera : — 

Introductory . . . . . . . . . 171 

Letter I 176 

Letter II 190 

Letter III .......... 205 

Letter IV 219 

Letter V 237 

Letter VI 255 

Annotations . . . . . . . . . .261 

Athena, Queen of the Air: — 

Introductory 275 

Part I 2S3 

Part II 330 

Part III 365 

Annotations ......... 424 

Mr. Ruskin as a Teacher 435 

Ruskin's Views on Education 437 



Ruskin's Life Purpose as Stated by Himself. 



" All my work is to help those who have eyes and see not." 

" I had no thought but of learning more, and teaching what truth 
I knew — for the student's sake, not my own fame's." 

" My purpose is to insist on the necessity as well as the dignity 
of an earnest, faithful, loving study of nature as she is." 

" The end of my whole professorship " (at Oxford) " would be 
accomplished, — if only the English nation could be made to under- 
stand that the beauty which is to be a joy forever, must be a joy 
for all." 



INTRODUCTION. 



i. 



A half-century has elapsed since the first volume of 
Modern Painters challenged the thoughtful attention of the 
public by its bold questioning of accepted standards in taste 
and art. 

The appeal to the artist (Turner) with which the volume 
closes reveals the spirit in which Ruskin's own work has 
always been done: "We desire that he should follow out 
his own thoughts and intents of heart, without reference to 
any human authority. But we suggest that those thoughts 
may be seriously and loftily given. We pray him to utter 
nothing lightly — to do nothing regardlessly. He stands 
upon an eminence, from which he looks back over the 
universe of God, and forward over the generations of men. 
Let every work of his hand be a history of the one, and a 
lesson to the other. Let each exertion of his mighty mind 
be both hymn and prophecy, — adoration to the deity, — 
revelation to mankind." 

In all his criticisms of art and life, Mr. Ruskin's attitude 
has been that of reverent love for truth as revealed in nature 
and in the human heart ; his purpose has been to open 
men's eyes to that truth, and so to lead them to bring their 
own lives into harmony through obedience to the eternal 
laws of righteousness. 

At five years of age, the child John Ruskin is said to 
have preached to an imaginary congregation a sermon, the 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

burden of which was, "People, be dood ! Dod will love 
you if you are dood. People, be dood ! " 

In his later years, it is reported that a Yorkshire country- 
man once talked with him and tried to tell him how much 
he had enjoyed his works. Mr. Ruskin's reply was: "I 
don't care whether you enjoyed them ; did they do you any 
good?" 

It is this unwavering perception of the beauty of goodness 
that has made Ruskin one of the great ethical teachers of 
this age. The prayer of Plato, " May the gods make me 
beautiful within," has been his ; but not for himself alone. 
With all the fervor of the Hebrew prophet, he has cried to 
all men, — " Cleanse that which is within ! " 

Religion, with him, is not a creed, nor a system of observ- 
ances, but an animating, controlling spirit. "Be ye perfect, 
even as your Father in Heaven is perfect," he verily 
believes should not be banished from thought as unattain- 
able, but should become the lodestar of conduct as well 
as of aspiration. 

The entire life of John Ruskin has been one of consecra- 
tion. He was devoted to the service of God by his mother, 
but her hope of seeing him a clergyman was never realized ; 
yet no man in this century has more faithfully performed the 
office of bishop and pastor according to the ideal as pre- 
sented by him in " Kings' Treasuries." His ministry has 
been to those who have ears for the truth, and he has, 
indeed, been eyes to the blind. A chronological review of 
his works, accompanied by a study of his life, discovers a 
single-hearted devotion to the cause of truth and beauty, 
and unwearied activity in its service. 

Reformers and philanthropists on the one hand, artists 
and art-critics on the other, have usually been regarded 
as two distinct types of men, with entirely different aims. 
It is for this reason that the publication of a series of 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

papers on Political Economy, under the title Unto This 
Last, in the same year (i860) in which the concluding 
volume of Modem Painters was published, was looked upon 
as an unaccountable phenomenon in authorship. And to 
this day, many, even of Mr. Ruskin's admirers, still consider 
the work of his later years as contradictory to that of the 
earlier period. 

In that fifth volume of Modern Painters, however, Ruskin, 
in reviewing the seventeen years of study during which his 
works on art and architecture had been written, says : " All 
true opinions are living and show their life by being capable 
of nourishment ; therefore of change. But their change is 
that of a tree, not of a cloud." Ruskin's criticisms of art 
had always been grounded on moral principles. He had 
tested all the work of man by its concurrence with the 
perfectness and beauty of the work of God, — so that "as 
the work changed like a tree, it was also rooted like 
a tree." 

l i In nature, Ruskin saw beauty ; in human society, he 
found deformity. Therefore it was natural that he should 
turn from a criticism of art to a criticism of life. It is 
because "he sees life steadily and sees it whole," that his 
efforts have been directed to secure moral wholeness, or 
health. His burning desire has been to bring man's life, — 
personal, social, political, — into harmony with the laws of 
God as impressed upon his being ; for he believes that the 
chief end of man is to glorify God by expressing in his own 
life the true image of the divine nature. 

John Ruskin sees nothing in isolation. He does not 
think of the artist, the mechanic, the merchant, the states- 
man, as concerned with unrelated interests. In all these 
accidental occupations of mankind, he beholds man striving 
by their means to realize himself, to fulfill his God-appointed 
destiny. 



X INTRODUCTION. 

Virtue, not vice; justice, not indifference or cruelty; 
helpful service, not crushing competition, seem to him the 
stepping-stones to truth expressed in life. He does not 
believe that any form of government or any legal enactment 
can make men better: they must reform their own lives — 
then alone will they attain true freedom. Hence he builds 
no Utopias. Duties, not rights, are his watchword. So, 
although he is a conservative, he demands the most radical 
reform. 

In a letter to Emerson, Carlyle wrote : " No man in 
England has in him the divine rage against iniquity, falsity, 
and baseness that Ruskin has, and that every man ought to 
have." 

It is because Ruskin's grasp of principles has been so 
firm and constant, his feelings so keen, and his speech so 
impetuous, that he has seemed to the world a harsh censor, 
when he has wished to be a helpful mentor. 

He does not reproach this age as being worse than others, 
but he judges all periods by the standards of clear honor, 
just dealing, sincerity of purpose. Artists of daily life he 
has sought above all things to develop. 

"He aimed," says Collingwood, "at the general introduc- 
tion of higher aims into ordinary life ; at giving true refine- 
ment to the lower classes ; true simplicity to the upper." 

This aim is thus forcibly expressed by himself in the 
concluding volume of Modern Pai?iters : "All effort in 
social improvement is paralyzed, because no one has been 
bold or clear-sighted enough to put and press home this 
radical question: 'What is, indeed, the noblest tone and 
reach of life for men ; and how can the possibility of it be 
extended to the greatest numbers ? ' It is answered, broadly 
and rashly, that wealth is good ; that knowledge is good ; 
that art is good ; that luxury is good. Whereas, none of 
them are good in the abstract, but good only if rightly 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

received. . . . This we know, shown clearly by the history 
of all time, that the arts and sciences, ministering to the 
pride of nations, have invariably hastened their ruin ; and 
this also, I firmly believe, that the same arts and sciences 
will tend as distinctly to exalt the strength and quicken the 
soul of every nation which employs them to increase the 
comfort of lowly life, and grace with happy intelligence the 
unambitious courses of honorable toil." 

However opinions may differ as to John Ruskin's theories 
in art and economics, it cannot be denied that he has been 
one of the great motive forces of this a°;e. 



II. 

In the volume entitled " Praeterita, or Scenes from My 
Past Life," John Ruskin has taken the reader into his con- 
fidence, and has revealed not merely the main incidents in 
his seventy-five years of life, but the inner controlling forces 
that have shaped his character. To the thoughtful student 
of humanity these formative influences are of absorbing 
interest, and especially in the case of those whom the world 
recognizes as leaders. 

The quiet life of the London home into which John 
Ruskin was born, February 8, 1819, was calculated to 
develop the love of order and the sense of peace which he 
counts as a rich part of his inheritance from those early years. 

Not only did the affection of his parents center in this, 
their only child, but to the day of their deaths (which 
occurred after Ruskin was past middle life) both his father 
and his mother seem to have lived only to promote his 
welfare. 

The almost Puritanic strictness of his mother early devel- 
oped in the boy habits of obedience and self-control. 
" Being always summarily whipped," he says, " if I cried, 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the stairs, I soon 
attained serene and secure methods of life and motion." 

Love of truth, which is the watchword throughout his 
writings, seems to have been inborn, and to have been 
fostered by the home atmosphere. An incident related of 
his mother's own childhood reveals much. She had, on one 
occasion, told her father a lie ; whereupon he sent his 
servant for a bundle of broom twigs with which to whip her. 
The impression left upon her character is evident from her 
words : "They did not hurt as much as one would have 
done, but I thought a great deal of it." 

The perfect truthfulness to which John Ruskin was 
accustomed, begot in him perfect faith, for as he says : 
" Nothing was ever promised me that was not given ; noth- 
ing ever threatened me that was not inflicted ; and nothing 
ever told me that was not true." It is his opinion that, 
" Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only by 
practice ; it is less a matter of will than of habit," and he 
doubts if any occasion can be trivial, which permits the 
practice and formation of such a habit. 

In his babyhood, little was done to amuse him ; and being 
left to his own resources chiefly, this naturally serious- 
minded child early accustomed himself to studiously observ- 
ing whatever came under his eye, within doors and without. 
The pattern of the carpet and the wall-paper divided his 
attention with the counting of bricks in the neighboring 
houses ; and the most exciting event in his day was watch- 
ing the process of filling the water-cart from an iron post on 
the pavement edge. To the habit of fixed attention with 
both eyes and mind thus formed, Mr. Ruskin attributes a 
large part of his power of looking into the very heart of 
things in later life. 

In his fifth year, his daily horizon was expanded by 
removal to Heme Hill, four miles distant from the heart of 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

London. The new home had a garden and an orchard, 
which so far satisfied the nature-loving boy that to him it 
seemed an Eden, especially since the climate then allowed 
him to pass a great part of his time in it. Yet he observed 
a difference between this Paradise and that of our first 
parents, viz., that whereas, in Eden, but one tree was for- 
bidden, at Heme Hill all the fruit was denied him. He 
also lamented that he had "no companionable beasts" to 
cheer his solitude. 

In his boyhood, his mother was his only teacher. He 
read aloud with her every week-day morning from Pope's 
translation of Homer and the novels of Sir Walter Scott ; 
and, on Sundays, "Robinson Crusoe" and "Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress." He was also required to read regularly from the 
Bible, and to commit certain portions to memory. Of this 
habit he says : " My mother forced me by steady, patient, 
daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart, as 
well as to read every syllable through aloud, hard names 
and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once every 
year. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, 
every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, 
till she made me understand the verse, if within my reach. 
It might be beyond me altogether, — that she did not care 
about ; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it 
all, I should get hold of it by the right end. If a name was 
hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation ; if a chapter 
was tiresome, the better the lesson in patience ; if a chap- 
ter was loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was 
some use in its being so outspoken." 

The effect of this training was to "make every word of 
the scriptures familiar to my ear in habitual music, — yet in 
that familiarity, reverenced as transcending all thought and 
ordaining all conduct." And of all the knowledge which he 
afterwards acquired, Ruskin counts this intimate acquaint- 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

ance with the Bible as, on the whole, the essential part of his 
education. 

Strict though she was, John Ruskin's mother seems never 
to have required him to commit more than he could easily 
learn by twelve o'clock, if he studied diligently. For the 
afternoon, he was free to employ himself as he chose. 

The father of John Ruskin must have been an ideal mer- 
chant, not only in the intelligence and exactitude of his busi- 
ness habits, which made him prosperous, and in the integrity 
which led his son to have written on the granite slab over 
his grave, — " He was an entirely honest merchant " ; — but 
because he was never enslaved by his business. He was a 
man of cultivated tastes, both in art and literature. 

It was his habit to go home to dinner at half-past four ; 
and he spent the evening in reading aloud, while the mother 
knitted, and the boy sat in a recess in the drawing-room, a 
cup of milk and a slice of bread and butter before him on a 
small table, listening or not, as he chose. He seems -to 
have found these readings interesting, for the authors whose 
acquaintance he made in that way, Scott, Shakespeare, 
Byron, and Cervantes, always continued to be favorites. 

Salutary as were these influences, Ruskin does not fail to 
recognize the narrowing tendency of his isolated childhood. 
He says : " My verdict on the general tenor of my educa- 
tion at this time must be that it was at once too formal and 
too luxurious ; leaving my character cramped indeed, but 
not disciplined ; and only by protection innocent, instead of 
by practice virtuous." 

While his intellectual taste was thus being cultivated, and 
the principles established which were to become the guiding 
motives of all his later work, his aesthetic and moral nature 
was yearly becoming enriched by leisurely travel through 
the picturesque scenes of England, or of Scotland, the 
native home of his parents. 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

These summer tours, which his father took for orders, 
were made a delightful two-months holiday to mother and 
son as well. In a post-chaise, with a seat specially arranged 
for the boy John, they traveled forty or fifty miles a day. 
Whenever they passed near a castle or a country gentle- 
man's house, they would visit it to inspect its collection of 
pictures, or to glean some interesting facts concerning its 
history. These glimpses of the life of the great seem 
never to have excited in them any envy or revolt Instead, 
they were grateful for life in a country so rich in inherited 
treasures and traditions. Thus Ruskin early saw, as he tells 
us, nearly all the noblemen's houses in England " in reverent 
and healthy delight of uncovetous admiration, — perceiving, 
as soon as I could perceive any political truth at all, that 
it was probably much happier to live in a small house 
and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than to 
live in Warwick Castle and have nothing to be astonished 
at ; but that, at all events, it would not make Brunswick 
Square 1 more pleasantly habitable to pull Warwick Castle 
down." 

Ruskin's susceptibility to the influences of nature was 
derived from his father. It is a pleasant picture, — that of 
the father and son, hand in hand, strolling along some by- 
path or hedgerow, " looking into the beauty of a flower, or 
gazing in rapture at some lovely nook where Nature had 
lavished her richest gifts of fern and foliage," for the elder 
Ruskin never failed to call the boy's attention to the 
beauties of any attractive scene. The result is, that, as he 
says, "I possess the gift of taking pleasure in landscape in 
a greater degree than most men." 

The discriminating taste in art, for which Ruskin has been 
remarkable, finds its roots likewise in his father's intelligent 
love of true art. In his infallible judgment the son trusts 

1 His early childhood's home was in Brunswick Square, London. 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

implicitly. By never allowing the boy to look at a bad 
picture after he was old enough to judge, and by critical 
examination of the pictures in the great houses they visited, 
his father formed in him a pure artistic taste. 

Very early also he became interested in stones and 
minerals. In later life, his collection of minerals was very 
extensive, and he made many and wide observations of 
geological strata in different countries, so that he thinks 
he might easily have distinguished himself as a geologist. 
Many of his writings have for their themes the sermons 
which he found in stones and running brooks, in leaves and 
flowers. 

We must not overlook the early practice in composition 
which made the written expression of thought natural to him. 
Close observation of details and accuracy in reporting what 
he saw, were developed by the habit of spending the even- 
ings on their travels in recording in a journal the observa- 
tions and experiences of the day. When at home, he 
accustomed himself to writing abstracts of books read, and 
to retelling stories with changed names and situations. 
Family birthdays were always festival occasions ; and, after 
he was old enough, he generally prepared as a delightful 
surprise for his father's birthday some original piece of 
composition which he often illustrated with his own drawings. 

In his case, it is easy to trace the influences which tended 
to make the child the father of the man. By all his early 
training and experiences he was being fitted for his calling 
as a teacher of ethics in art and life. These tendencies may 
almost be said to have been crystallized by a gift made 
to him on his fourteenth birthday by one of his father's 
partners. This gift was a copy of Rogers's " Italy," a work 
illustrated by the artist Turner. 

So enraptured was he by these pictures of Italian scenery 
that his mother proposed that their summer's tour should be 



INTRODUCTION. XV11 

made in those scenes, instead of following their usual route. 
It was a decision trembling with destiny. The mother could 
not have foreseen that the "Continental Journey" so joyful 
to them all was to make of her son a writer of books, instead 
of a preacher of pulpit sermons. 

Love of mountains has always been a passion with 
Ruskin. To the artist who painted his portrait at the age 
of three, he had said, when asked what he would like for 
a background, — "Blue hills." In " Praeterita," he has 
described his first sight of the Alps, which was to him a 
consecration : " It was drawing towards sunset when we got 
up to some sort of garden promenade — high above the 
Rhine, so as to command the open country. At which open 
country of low undulations far into blue, — suddenly — 
behold — beyond." "There was no thought in any of us 
of their being clouds. They were clear as crystal, sharp on 
the horizon sky ; and already tinged with rose by the sink- 
ing sun. Infinitely beyond all that we had ever thought or 
dreamed — the seen walls of lost Eden could not have been 
more beautiful to us ; not more awful, round heaven, the 
Avails of sacred death." 

" It is not possible to imagine, in any time of the world, a 
more blessed entrance into life for a child of such a tempera- 
ment as mine. I went down that evening with my destiny 
fixed in all of it that was to be sacred and useful. To that 
terrace, and the shore of the Lake of Geneva, my heart and 
faith return to this day, in every impulse that is yet nobly alive 
in them, and every thought that has in it help or peace." 

In 1836, at the age of seventeen, Ruskin entered Christ 
Church College at the University of Oxford. The associa- 
tions of the place impressed his sensitive nature, and the 
years spent there were fruitful in friendships, if not especially 
influential in developing his abilities. His desire to gratify 
his parents' ambitious hopes impelled him to compete 



XV111 INTRODUCTION. 

successfully for the Newdigate Prize Poem. But for college 
honors, which must be won by memory-cramming and com- 
petitive examinations, he had no ambition ; and when, in his 
third year at Oxford, a hemorrhage of the lungs led his 
physicians to recommend a winter in Italy, he hailed the 
permission to leave off his scholastic studies as a happy 
reprieve, saying that the delight of resuming his sketching 
gave a healthy stimulus to all the faculties which had been 
latently progressive in him. 

Oxford afterwards honored herself by conferring upon him 
degrees in acknowledgment of his invaluable services to 
literature and art ; and, when the Slade Art Professorship 
was established (1869), Mr. Ruskin willingly accepted its 
duties that he might arouse in the youth of the higher 
classes an intelligent interest in art. The lectures that he 
delivered while holding this professorship are among the 
most instructive and inspiring of his writings. 

On his twenty-first birthday, his father made him a present 
of a drawing by Turner, and also settled upon him about 
$1000 a year for spending-money, $350 of which the young 
man immediately spent for one of Turner's water-colors. 

The real work of Ruskin's life may be said to have begun 
when, at the age of twenty-four, he published a defense of 
Turner's methods in painting, which had been bitterly 
attacked by the critics. Whatever might be thought of 
Turner, the English reading public detected in this volume, 
entitled "Modern Painters," and signed "By an Oxford 
Graduate," the voice of a new master of English prose. 

All the works that issued from his pen until he was forty 
years old combined to give him the reputation of being an 
Apostle of the Beautiful ; but Ruskin never had believed in 
the doctrine of " Art for Art's sake " : he had always held 
that its reason for being was to give expression to the 
diviner perceptions and feelings in man, and thereby to 



INTRODUCTION. XIX 

purify and elevate all life. " The main business of art," he 
says, "is its service in the actual uses of daily life." "The 
giving brightness to pictures, is much, but the giving bright- 
ness to life, more." 

Since i860, the work of Mr. Ruskin, which has been 
mainly exerted to bring brightness and beauty into the lives 
of men and women of all classes, may be considered under 
two aspects : first, as a writer and lecturer ; second, as a 
practical philanthropist. 

Feeling that the mechanical grind of machine-labor had 
taken from the common workman all the joy in work ; that 
the cruel oppression of Competition had led many men to 
find their happiness at the expense of others' loss, Mr. 
Ruskin lifted up his voice in protest against what he con- 
siders the false notions of social economics which are at the 
root of much of the misery in the modern world. He says 
that he could not go on painting or doing anything else that 
he liked because he was made wretched by the knowledge of 
the undeserved suffering all about him. "Therefore," he 
says, " I will endure it no longer quietly ; but, henceforward, 
with any few or many who will help me, I will do my poor 
best to abate this misery." 

To that end, he has lectured to Oxford students and to 
the citizens of many towns in England ; he has written 
numerous letters to workingmen, and published articles on 
questions of political economy ; he has tried to teach young 
and old of all ranks through papers on art and science and 
nature ; the burden of his message being always : Let 
the love of the true, the beautiful, and the good mould your 
individual and your national life, so that purity and whole- 
some living may be possible to all. 

By teaching its classes and in other ways, the Working- 
men's College and the University Extension Courses have 
received Mr. Ruskin's active personal support. 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

As of Chaucer's parson, so it may be justly said of Mr. 
Ruskin that — 

" Cristes lore and his apostles twelve 
He taught, but first he followed it himselve." 

Of the large fortune of nearly $800,000 left him by his 
father, he has kept less than one-twelfth for himself, having 
used the rest in establishing museums, art-schools and 
libraries ; in erecting comfortable dwelling-houses for the 
poor ; in aiding needy young men and women to get an 
education, etc. He has not simply been •the almoner, 
entrusting the distribution of his gifts to others, but has 
himself, in most cases, attended personally to the carrying 
out of his benevolent schemes. He gave altogether $70,000 
to establish St. George's Guild near Sheffield, where the 
effort was made to put into practical operation a community 
of industries conducted on the principle of cooperation 
instead of competition. Those who joined this Guild were 
asked to subscribe to the following statement of faith and 
practice : 

1. I trust in the living God, Father Almighty, Maker of 
Heaven and Earth, and of all things and creatures, visible 
and invisible. I trust in the kindness of His law and the 
goodness of His work. And I will strive to love Him and 
to keep His law, and to see His work while I live. 

2. I trust in the nobleness of human nature — in the 
majesty of its faculties, the fullness of its mercy, and the joy 
of its love. And I will strive to love my neighbor as myself, 
and even when I cannot, I will act as if I did. 

3. I will labor with such strength and opportunity as 
God gives me, for my own daily bread ; and all that my 
hand finds to do, I will do it with my might. 

4. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any human 
being for my gain or pleasure ; nor hurt, nor cause to be 



INTRODUCTION. XXI 

hurt, any human being for my gain or pleasure ; nor rob, 
nor cause to be robbed, any human being for my gain or 
pleasure. 

5. I will not kill or hurt any living creature needlessly, 
nor destroy any beautiful thing ; but will strive to save and 
to comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural 
beauty upon the earth. 

6. I will strive to raise my own body and soul daily into 
higher powers of duty and happiness ; not in rivalship or 
contention with others, but for the help, delight, and honor 
of others, and for the joy and peace of my own life. 

7. I will obey all the laws of my country faithfully; and 
the order of its monarch, so far as such laws and commands 
are consistent with what I suppose to be the law of God ; 
and when they are not so, or seem in any wise to need 
change, I will oppose them loyally and deliberately — not 
with malicious, concealed, or disorderly violence. 

8. And with the same faithfulness, and under the limits of 
the same obedience, which I render to the laws of my 
country, and the commands of its rulers, I will obey the 
laws of the society called of St. George ... so long as I 
remain a companion called of St. George. 

The land which the Guild worked was to be brought 
under perfect cultivation ; the laborers were to be paid 
unchanging, sufficient wages ; and their children were to be 
educated in industrial schools that would develop their 
special powers ; the girls were to be taught domestic arts. 
Gentleness, courtesy, truth, and obedience were to be strictly 
inculcated. By hearing of brave and beautiful deeds, rever- 
ence was to be cultivated, and all were to be taught music 
as an expression of true feeling. 

Experimentally, the plan has not been a success, because 
it was undertaken by people who did not understand or 
sympathize fully with Mr. Ruskin's ideas. His efforts to 



XX11 INTRODUCTION. 

induce manufacturers to produce honest goods, and trades- 
men to offer for sale unadulterated articles were not without 
effect, however, and the leaven of the principles of the 
Guild of St. George is still working. 

Mr. Ruskin is no cold speculative spinner of theories 
which are foreign to his own practice. The motto which he 
adopted for his crest — "To-day ! " — is the keynote of his 
entire life. Whenever he has felt that a word must be 
spoken to awaken the ignorant or the indifferent, he has 
said it. Wherever he has seen an opportunity for bettering 
conditions, he has, at once, done all in his power for their 
improvement. On one occasion, finding a crop of thistles 
growing as the result of a farmer's carelessness, he eradi- 
cated them with his own hands. While he was lecturing at 
Oxford, he said to the students : " Will none of you of your 
own strength and leisure do anything for the poor — drain a 
single cottage, repair a single village by-way ? Then, you 
yourselves will be more strong, and your hearts more light, 
than had your leisure been spent in costly games or more 
hurtful amusements." There was an active response to this 
noble appeal, resulting in the mending of a neglected piece 
of road. His own sincerity and earnestness were demon- 
strated by his taking lessons in stone-breaking himself. 
Indeed, he has consistently upheld the dignity of all honest 
labor. He tells us that the happiest bit of manual labor 
that he ever did was for his mother once when they were 
traveling in Switzerland. She had complained that the 
stone staircase in the little inn where they were stopping 
was unbearably dirty. Nobody belonging to the house 
seeming to think it possible to wash it, Ruskin says he 
brought the necessary buckets of water from the yard, 
" poured them into a beautiful image of Versailles water- 
works " down the fifteen or twenty steps, and, with the 
strongest broom he could find, cleaned every step into its 



INTRODUCTION. XX111 

corner. " It was quite lovely work to dash the water and 
drive the mud from each with accumulating splash down to 
the next one." 

No wonder that he held that " A true lady should be a 
princess, a washerwoman, — yes, a washerwoman ! To see 
that all is fair and clean, to wash with water, to cleanse and 
purify wherever she goes, to set disordered things in orderly 
array." 

Ruskin has said that the creation of the world for him 
dates from a day in his fifth year when his nurse took him 
to Friar's Crag on Derwentwater. "The intense joy mingled 
with awe that I had in looking through the mossy roots over 
the crag into the dark lake has associated itself more or less 
with all twining roots of trees ever since." 

In his sixtieth year, suffering from illness and exhaustion 
induced by excessive labors and anxiety, he " wearied for 
the heights that look down upon the dale," and felt that if 
he could only lie down there, he should get well again. He 
was glad, therefore, to avail himself of an opportunity that 
offered to purchase a house and land overlooking Lake 
Coniston, near the spot so dear in his memory. 

Brantwood, as he calls the place, has ever since been to 
him a refuge of peace and joy. For although he still retains 
the old home at Heme Hill, yet he loves to work and rest 
with congenial friends in this beautiful retreat among the 
hills and lakes. 

Those who have been associated with him the longest 
and most intimately, love him ardently. The feeling which 
throbs in every page he has written expresses itself in 
thoughtful kindliness to all who come within the charmed 
circle of his friendship. He is a perfect host, a considerate 
neighbor, a lover of children and of animals, — a teacher 
whose own life has been a consistent expression of the ideal 
knighthood of which he has been the fearless advocate. 



INTRODUCTION. 



III. 



Mr. Ruskin has always recognized and accepted his own 
limitations. While he has used the pencil and the brush 
with great delicacy and skill, in the illustration of his works, 
he early discovered that nature had not gifted him with the 
creative faculty necessary to the successful artist. In his 
youth, he wrote poems which the affectionate admiration of 
his friends afterwards induced him to publish, but he him- 
self knew that he was lacking in the constructive imagina- 
tion essential to the production of great poems, so he never 
wrote poetry after he was thirty years of age. But those 
who have been thrilled by the melody and the picturing 
power of his rhythmical imaginative prose find in this noth- 
ing to regret. For, under his touch, English prose has 
revealed a capability of sensuous, lyrical expression before 
unknown. 

A recent writer has said : " Poetry is the expression, in 
beautiful form and melodious language, of the best thoughts 
and noblest emotions, which the spectacle of life awakens 
in the finest souls ; hence, it is clear that this may be 
effected by prose as truly as by verse, if only the language 
be rhythmical and beautiful." 

Words are to Ruskin not merely mechanical devices for 
convenience in the communication of ideas. The sense of 
Tightness, which dominates all his thinking, leads him to be 
perfectly accurate and precise in the use of words ; the 
reverence with which he views all of life gives to his 
language an impassioned, persuasive character ; the pene- 
trating vision, which reveals to him everywhere in nature 
the presence of the beautiful, imparts to his prose a rich 
ornamentation and a chaste imagery. 

Ruskin's style had really been formed by his childhood's 
habit of daily repetition of the poetic language of the Bible. 



INTRODUCTION. XXV 

The fervor of feeling, the sublime simplicity of diction, the 
glow of imaginative vision characteristic of the Hebrew 
poets and prophets had become his own mode of thinking, 
and, consequently, of expression. So much was said of the 
beauty of his style in his earlier works that he was seriously 
disturbed, and complained that, "People do not think at all 
about what I am saying, but only about how I say it." 

It is acknowledged by a critic not altogether friendly that, 
if we compare anything which is familiar to us with Ruskin's 
description of it, we shall find that, not only are his words 
pleasing in their appeal to the ear and the eye, but also that 
he has given an exhaustive enumeration of attributes, and 
the most discriminating selection of the features that give 
distinctive essence to the thing described. 

Ruskin himself says that he left no passage until he had 
put into it as much as it could be made to carry, and that he 
had chosen the words with the utmost precision and tune he 
could give them. Much as he loves words for their Tight- 
ness and their beauty, in his dealing with every question, he 
avoids, as far as possible, technical terms. Scholastic 
verbal quiddities are hateful to him because he goes to the 
heart of life in the endeavor to penetrate its secret. 

Ruskin's writings everywhere give evidence that " The 
style is the man." The same unity and harmony are in his 
language as in his view of art and life ; the same principles 
control his style as his thought. " All the virtues of 
language," he says, " are in their roots, moral ; it becomes 
accurate if the speaker desires to be true ; clear, if he 
speaks with sympathy and a desire to be intelligible ; power- 
ful, if he has earnestness ; pleasant, if he has sense of 
rhythm and order." 

Writing to young students, Mr. Ruskin admonished them 
to fix in their minds as the guiding principle of all right 
labor and the source of all healthful energy the idea that 



XXVI INTRODUCTION. 

t 

their art should be in praise of something that they loved. 
It might be the praise of a shell or a stone ; it might be the 
praise of a hero ; it might be the praise of God ; but it 
must be the expression of true delight in some real thing. 
This is the secret of the moving quality, the impressiveness 
of Ruskin's writings. He loved nature as the expression of 
the loving thought of God. He studied plants and clouds 
and mountains, not as an artist, to paint pictures ; not as a 
scientist, to class and analyze them ; but to discover their 
aspects, to read in them the revelation of God to man. 
Like Wordsworth, he had felt, — 

" A sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things ; all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

It is because of this consciousness of the Indwelling God 
that Ruskin has been the interpreter of the mystical mean- 
ings in the various voices of nature. That he speaks to the 
common heart of man is shown by the fact that "his works 
have found their way among all classes." 

Ruskin is unsurpassed as a painter with words ; but he is 
more than a word-painter : his power to touch imagination 
with emotion, to stir the deeper feelings, and to rouse the 
whole moral nature will continue to make his a life-giving 
influence over generations to come. 



^^k^^r^ 







"iSl^B 



#f f iii 







A List of the Collected Works of Mr. Ruskin. 



The Poetry of Architecture. Papers Contributed to the 

Architectural Magazine. 183 7-1 839. 
The King of the Golden River. A Mythical Story for the 

Young. 1S41. 
Modern Painters. 5 vols. 1 843-1 860. 
Seven Lamps of Architecture. 1849. 
Pre-Raphaelitism. 1S51. 
Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds. (On the 

Duty of Pastors.) 1851. 
Stones of Venice. 3 vols. 1 851 -1853. 
Lectures on Architecture. 1853. 
Elements of Drawing. (Letters to Beginners.) 1857. 
The Political Economy of Art. 1857. 
Two Paths on Art. Its Application to Decoration and Manu- 
facture. 1859. 
Poems. Collected in 1S59. 

Unto This Last. Lectures on Political Economy, i860. 
Munera Pulverls. On the Elements of Political Economy. 

1S63. 
Sesame and Lilies. 1865. 
Ethics of the Dust. Lectures to Little Housewives on the 

Elements of Crystallization. 1865. 
Crown of Wild Olive. Three Lectures on Work, Traffic, and 

War. 1 866. 
Time and Tide. Letters to a Workingman on the Laws of 

Work. 1867. 
The Queen of the Air. A Study of the Greek Myths of 

Cloud and Storm. 1869. 



XXV111 LIST OF COLLECTED WORKS. 

Lectures on Art. Delivered before the University of Oxford. 

1870. 
Aratra Pentelici. Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture 

Delivered at Oxford. 1870. 
Fors Clavigera. Letters to Workingmen. 1871-1878. 
Ariadne Florentina. Lectures on Wood and Metal Engrav- 
ing. 1872. 
Love's Meinie. A Study of Birds. 1873. 
The Art of England. (Oxford Lectures.) 1874. 
Proserpina. Studies of Wayside Flowers. 1874. 
Deucalion. Studies on the Lapse of Waves and the Life of 

Stones. 1876. 
St. Mark's Rest. The History of Venice. 1877. 
Val d' Arno. Oxford Lectures on Tuscan Art. 1877. 
The Laws of Fesole. A Familiar Treatise on the Elementary 

Principles of Drawing and Painting, Arranged for the Use of 

Schools. 1877. 
Mornings in Florence. Simple Studies on Christian Art. 

1877- 
Arrows of the Chace. (Collected Letters.) 1880. 
Pleasures of England. (Oxford Lectures.) 1885. 
Our Fathers Have Told Us. Sketches of the History of 

Christendom for Boys and Girls who have been held at its 

Fonts. 1885. 
Miscellanea. A Collection of Letters and Papers not included 

in his other published works. 
Hortus Inclusus. 
Praeterita. An Autobiography. 1887. 



Bibliographical References. 



Aside from Mr. Ruskin's self-revelations in Praeterita, Fo?s 
Clavigera, etc., the best and most reliable account of him as a 
man and a writer is — 

Life of Johx Ruskin, by W. G. Collingwood. 

Other valuable studies of his life and writings are found in the 
following named works : — 

Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning, by Mrs. 

Anne Thackeray Ritchie. 
Poets and Problems, by G. W. Cooke. 
Lessons from my Masters, by Peter Bayne. 
John Ruskin, His Life and Teaching, by J. R. Mather. 
Modern Leaders, by Justin McCarthy. 
Pen Pictures of Modern Authors, by Shepard. 
Out of the Past, by Godwin. 
The Work of John Ruskin, by Chas. Waldstein. 
The Victorian Age of English Literature, by Mrs. 

Oliphant. 
Famous Authors of the Nineteenth Century, by S. K. 

Bolton. 



ESSAYS AND LETTERS 

OF 

JOHN RUSKIN. 



The intellect becomes noble and ignoble according to the food we 
give it, and the kind of subjects with which it is conversant. — Stones of 
Venice. 

In the cloud of the human soul there is a fire stronger than the 
lightning, and a grace more precious than the rain ; and though of the 
good and evil it shall one day be said alike, that the place that knew 
them knows them no more, there is an infinite separation between those 
whose brief presence had been there a blessing, like the mist of Eden 
that went up from the earth to water the garden, and those whose place 
knew them only as a drifting and changeful shade, of whom the 
heavenly sentence is, that they are " wells without water; clouds that 
are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved 
for ever." — Mystery of Life. 



SESAME AND LILIES. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

Ruskin certainly has a right to demand that those who 
read his writings shall obey the rule which he says should 
govern all reading : " Be sure that you go to an author to 
find out his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it after- 
wards, if you think yourself qualified to do so ; but ascertain 
it first." 

He has himself said, in a preface to these lectures, that 
their entire gist is to be found in the concluding paragraphs 
of the third lecture, "The Mystery of Life and its Arts." 
Therein we find an emphatic statement of his view of what 
constitutes right living. 

Instead of thinking what we are to get, he would have us 
think what we ought to do to make this world a good place 
for all God's children to live their lives in. 

" Those of us who mean to fulfill our duty ought, first," 
he says, "to live on as little as we can ; and, secondly, to 
do all the wholesome work we can, and to spend all we can 
spare in doing all the sure good we can." 

As is his custom, Ruskin would make the scriptural teach- 
ing a rule of practice, as well as of faith. To every man, 
whatever his station in life, who is doing nothing for the 
good of the world, he would say : " If any man will not 
work, neither should he eat." 

Helpful action in cooperation with others should be 
made the rule of life. For this, immediate opportunity 



4 SESAME AND LILIES. 

may always be found in mending evil material conditions. 
Every one should learn to do some useful thing thoroughly. 
When we educate our youths to "make it the effort of 
their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in thought, 
lovely in word and deed," we shall have put into their hands 
the keys of the kingdom of heaven which is within us. 



" Sesame and Lilies " deals primarily with motives ; in 
these we shall find the sesame, the talisman, by which we 
may open all doors of feeling and understanding ; these 
hold the keys of Life, or — it may be — of Death. Mr. 
Ruskin's poetic nature appears in his love of symbolic 
names. The " Kings' Treasuries " of which he writes, are 
those which contain the precious thoughts of kingly minds 
in all ages — the great, true books of the world. 

What to read, and how to read might be the title of this 
lecture. Because of "our daily enlarging means of educa- 
tion " the choice of books is becoming of vital importance, 
not only to the individual, but to the national health. 
In Mr. Ruskin's opinion, there is a fundamental error in 
the common idea of the purpose of education. Most people 
are seeking an education for their children in order that it 
may secure to them some worldly advantage ; whereas, they 
do not seem to realize that there may be an education which 
is in itself an advancement in that higher life which 
does not consist in the abundance of things which a man 
possesses. 

With keen penetration, Mr. Ruskin analyzes the popular 
idea of "advancement in life," and finds that it practically 
means becoming conspicuous ; i.e., being recognized as 
having attained to something respectable or honorable. In 
making money, not the having wealth, but what Bacon calls 
"the fame of riches" ; in acquiring a position of authority, 



INTRODUCTORY. 5 

not the consciousness of superior ability to discharge its 
duties, but to hear himself addressed as "Captain," or " My 
Lord," — this it is which stimulates ambitious effort. Love 
of praise he believes to be the powerful incentive to human 
action, especially in our day. We want to get into what the 
world calls "good society," that we may be seen in it. 

Although Mr. Ruskin may seem to set a low estimate 
upon the motives of men in general, yet he does not deny 
that the desire of being useful, of duty to fellow-men, does 
have a share in the motives of most. 

In associating with the true and the wise, we are most 
likely to be happy and useful. How are we to secure such 
association? Few of us can be' admitted to the higher 
circles of human intelligence among the living men and 
women of our own day ; but, while we vainly covet an 
audience with queens and princes, with men of science and 
great poets, we sometimes overlook the fact that the best 
thought of the princely minds of all ages is offered to us, 
and is waiting patiently for our listening ear. Hidden 
behind the covers of books we may find the best expression 
of the deepest thought of the wise. But there are books 
and books : it is essential to distinguish. 

The inherently bad books, it is needless to say, should 
never be opened ; but, if we would so use books as to 
advance ourselves in the true sense, we must follow Mr. 
Ruskin's suggestion : give some time to the "good books 
for the hour," which acquaint us with the life of our own 
age ; but give our chief attention to the masterpieces in 
literature, — the "good books for all time." These Books 
of the Kings are the treasuries whose gems may be won by 
all who learn the sesame, or magic pass-word. 

The remainder of the lecture is devoted chiefly to showing 
how such knowledge may be acquired ; for this noble society 
will open its doors only to those who make themselves 



6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

worthy. Worthiness is to be attained through love alone, and 
this love must be shown in two ways : First, by patient atten- 
tion and laborious study whereby we may enter understand- 
ing^ into their thoughts; second, by sharing their mighty pas- 
sion, through which we may rise to a knowledge of their hearts. 

A reader of many books, according to Mr. Ruskin, is not 
necessarily an educated person. The superficial study of 
several languages may even be attended by a kind of 
illiteracy, i.e., a lack of real understanding of the words 
of any language. On the other hand, the accurate knowl- 
edge which manifests itself in correct pronunciation, pre- 
cision in the use of words, and a clear understanding of the 
pedigree and history of his own language, marks a truly 
educated man. To acquire this knowledge entails severe 
study, but " the general gain to character in power and pre- 
cision will be quite incalculable." 

To illustrate his idea of the kind of study necessary for 
acquiring this exact knowledge, Mr. Ruskin examines closely 
a passage from Milton's " Lycidas." His analysis, or 
" word-by- word examination," not only makes the sense of 
this passage intelligible, but also shows just how he would 
have us get the author's meaning in reading any piece of 
literature ; by banishing from our thoughts, for the time, 
all preconceived notions of our own, and entering into the 
mind of the writer so as to see what he saw. 

To make our minds good ground for the growth of the 
seeds which these Kings of Thought have to sow, we must 
clear them of all weeds of prejudice, and root up and 
utterly destroy whatever evil may have begun to grow 
therein. By this means, since " moral judgments are based 
on intellectual," we shall be able to take the second step 
towards worthiness to be admitted to friendly companion- 
ship with the great. By habits of precise thinking, we enter 
into their minds ; but it is only by feeling truly that we can 



INTRODUCTORY. 7 

enter into their hearts. Sensitive sympathy with whatsoever 
is pure, just, and noble gives the talismanic sesame which 
opens the doors to the treasuries of living truth. 

As with the individual, so with the nation. " For as in 
nothing is a gentleman better to be discerned from a vulgar 
person, so in nothing is a gentle nation better to be dis- 
cerned from a mob, than in this, — that their feelings are 
constant and just, results of due contemplation, and of 
equal thought." 

By citing actual examples drawn from (then) recent 
occurrences, Ruskin shows how England falls short of real 
greatness, — that greatness which secures to every man, 
woman, and child healthful conditions for the development 
of sound bodies, intelligent minds, pure morals. 

His own justness in judging is made evident by his 
acknowledging that the public heart still beats true in 
response to an appeal to its higher feelings. " Instinctive, 
reckless virtue," however, cannot save a nation ; its pas- 
sions must be disciplined by reason, and controlled by love 
of justice and righteousness. 

That the " insanity of avarice " is so seriously affecting 
the mind of England as to cause a loss of hearty apprecia- 
tion of nature's beauties, of art, literature, and science, and 
a blunting of human sympathy, is proved by the evidence of 
striking facts. 

It is negative virtue revealed by callous indifference to 
remediable evils that leads Mr. Ruskin to accuse the public 
of " childish illiterateness." It is this want of right educa- 
tion which prevents our reading aright the lessons hidden 
in the Kings' Treasuries of Wisdom. The seeing eye and 
the understanding heart lead to the true advancement in 
life. " He only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting 
softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose 
spirit is entering into Living Peace." 



8 SESAME AND LILIES. 

In the men who have this life resides the true kinghood. 
They are the men of power. The ideal state will be realized 
when these men, putting themselves under the guidance of 
the "Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought," and so 
becoming " magnanimous — mighty of heart, mighty of 
mind," — shall sit in the seats of kings and bring forth 
treasures of wisdom for their people. 

In public education, directed to make men thoughtful, 
merciful, and just, is the only talisman of public health and 
public safety. 



LECTURE I. — SESAME. 

OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 1 

" You shall each have a cake of sesame, — and ten pound." 

Lucian : The Fisherman. 

i. My first duty this evening is to ask your pardon for 
the ambiguity of title under which the subject of this lecture 
has been announced : for indeed I am not going to talk of 
kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to 
contain wealth ; but "of quite another order of royalty, and 
another material of riches, than those usually acknowledged. 
I had even intended to ask your attention for a little while 
on trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in taking a friend 
to see a favorite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted 
most to show, with such imperfect cunning as I might, until 
we unexpectedly reached the best point of view by winding 
paths. But — and as also I have heard it said, by men 
practiced in public address, that hearers are never so much 
fatigued as by the endeavor to follow a speaker who gives 

1 This lecture was given December 6, 1864, at Rusholme Town Hall, 
Manchester, in aid of a library fund for the Rusholme Institute. 



OF KIXGS TREASURIES. 9 

them no clue to his purposes, — I will take the slight mask 
off at once, and tell you plainly that I want to speak to you 
about the treasures hidden in books ; and about the way we 
find them, and the way we lose them. A grave subject, 
you will say ; and a wide one ! Yes ; so wide that I shall 
make no effort to touch the compass of it. I will try only 
to bring before you a few simple thoughts about reading, 
which press themselves upon me every day more deeply, as 
I watch the course of the public mind with respect to our 
daily enlarging means of education; and the answeringly 
wider spreading on the levels, of the irrigation of literature. 
2. It happens that I have practically some connection 
with schools for different classes of youth ; and I receive 
many letters from parents respecting the education of their 
children. In the mass of these letters I am always struck 
by the precedence which the idea of a " position in life " 
takes above all other thoughts in the parents' — more 
especially in the mothers' — minds. "The education befit- 
ting such and such a station in life'' — this is the phrase, 
this the object, always. They never seek, as far as I can 
make out, an education good in itself ; even the conception 
of abstract Tightness in training rarely seems reached by the 
writers. But, an education " which shall keep a good coat 
on my son's back; — which shall enable him to ring with 
confidence the visitors' bell at doubled-belled doors ; which 
shall result ultimately in establishment of a doubled-belled 
door to his own house ; — in a word, which shall lead to 
'advancement in life' ; — this we pray for on bent knees — 
and this is all we pray for." It never seems to occur to 
the parents that there may be an education which, in itself, 
is advancement in Life ; — that any other than that may 
perhaps be advancement in Death ; and that this essential 
education might be more easily got, or given, than they 
fancy, if they set about it in the right way ; while it is for 



IO SESAME AND LILIES. 

no price, and by no favor, to be got, if they set about it in 
the wrong. 

3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective 
in the mind of this busiest of countries, I suppose the first 
— at least that which is confessed with the greatest frank- 
ness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus to youthful 
exertion — is this of "Advancement in life." May I ask 
you to consider with me what this idea practically includes, 
and what it should include. 

Practically, then, at present, " advancement in life " 
means, becoming conspicuous in life • — obtaining a position 
which shall be acknowledged by others to be respectable or 
honorable. We do not understand by this advancement, in 
general, the mere making of money, but the being known to 
have made it ; not the accomplishment of any great aim, 
but the being seen to have accomplished it. In a word, we 
mean the gratification of our thirst for applause. That 
thirst, if the last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first 
infirmity of weak ones ; and, on the whole, the strongest 
impulsive influence of average humanity : the greatest 
efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of 
praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure. 

4. I am not about to attack or defend this impulse. I 
want you only to feel how it lies at the root of effort ; 
especially of all modern effort. It is the gratification of 
vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of toil, and balm of 
repose ; so closely does it touch the vei'y springs of life 
that the wounding of our vanity is always spoken of (and 
truly) as in its measure mortal ; we call it "mortification," 
using the same expression which we should apply to a 
gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And although few 
of us may be physicians enough to recognize the various 
effect of this passion upon health and energy, I believe most 
honest men know, and would at once acknowledge, its lead- 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. I I 

ing power with them as a motive. The seaman does not 
commonly desire to be made captain only because he knows 
he can manage the ship better than any other sailor on 
board. He wants to be made captain that he may be called 
captain. The clergyman does not usually want to be made 
a bishop only because he believes no other hand can, as 
firmly as his, direct the diocese through its difficulties. He 
wants to be made bishop primarily that he may be called 
" My Lord." And a prince does not usually desire to 
enlarge, or a subject to gain, a kingdom, because he believes 
that no one else can as well serve the State, upon its 
throne ; but, briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as 
"Your Majesty," by as many lips as may be brought to such 
utterance. 

5. This, then, being the main idea of "advancement in 
life," the force of it applies, for all of us, according to our 
station, particularly to that secondary result of such ad- 
vancement which Ave call "getting into good society." We 
want to get into good society, not that we may have it, but 
that we may be seen in it ; and our notion of its goodness 
depends primarily on its conspicuousness. 

Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put what 
I fear you may think an impertinent question ? I never can 
go on with an address unless I .feel, or know, that my 
audience are either with me or against me : I do not much 
care which, in beginning ; but I must know where they are ; 
and I would fain find out, at this instant, whether you think 
I am putting the motives of popular action too low. I am 
resolved, to-night, to state them low enough to be admitted 
as probable ; for whenever, in my writings on Political 
Economy, I assume that a little honesty, or generosity — or 
what used to be called "virtue" — may be calculated upon 
as a human motive of action, people always answer me, say- 
ing, "You must not calculate on that : that is not in human 



12 SESAME AND LILIES. 

nature : you must not assume anything to be common to 
men but acquisitiveness and jealousy; no other feeling ever 
has influence on them, except accidentally, and in matters 
out of the way of business." I begin, accordingly, to-night 
low in the scale of motives ; but I must know if you think 
me right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask those who 
admit the love of praise to be usually the strongest motive 
in men's minds in seeking advancement, and the honest 
desire of doing any kind of duty to be an entirely secondary 
one, to hold up their hands. {About a dozen of hands held 
up — the audience, partly, not being sure the lecturer is serious, 
and, partly, shy of expressing opinion.) I am quite serious 
— I really do want to know what you think ; however, I 
can judge by putting the reverse question. Will those who 
think that duty is generally the first, and love of praise the 
second, motive, hold up their hands? (One hand reported 
to have been held up, behind the lecturer.) Very good ; I see 
you are with me, and that you think I have not begun too 
near the ground. Now, without teasing you by putting 
farther question, I venture to assume that you will admit 
duty as at least a secondary or tertiary motive. You think 
that the desire of doing something useful, or obtaining some 
real good, is indeed an existent collateral idea, though a 
secondary one, in most men's desire of advancement. You 
will grant that moderately honest men desire place and 
office, at least in some measure, for the sake of beneficent 
power ; and would wish to associate rather with sensible 
and well-informed persons than with fools and ignorant 
persons, whether they are seen in the company of the 
sensible ones or not. And finally, without being troubled 
by repetition of any common truisms about the precious- 
ness of friends, and the influence of companions, you will 
admit, doubtless, that according to the sincerity of our 
desire that our friends may be true, and our companions 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 1 3 

wise, — and in proportion to the earnestness and discretion 
with which we choose both, will be the general chances of 
our happiness and usefulness. 

6. But, granting that we had both the will and the sense 
to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power ! 
or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice ! 
Nearly all our associations are determined by chance, or 
necessity ; and restricted within a narrow circle. We can- 
not know whom we would ; and those whom we know, we 
cannot have at our side when we most need them. All the 
higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, 
only momentarily and partially open. YVe may, by good 
fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the 
sound of his voice ; or put a question to a man of science, 
and be answered good-humoredly. We may intrude ten 
minutes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with 
words worse than silence, being deceptive ; or snatch, once 
or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in 
the path of a Princess, or arresting the kind glance of a 
Queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet ; and 
spend our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit of 
little more than these ; while, meantime, there is a society 
continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long 
as we like, whatever our rank or occupation ; — talk to us 
in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest 
their hearts. And this society, because it is so numerous 
and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day 
long, — kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to 
grant audience, but to gain it ! — in those plainly furnished 
and narrow anterooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make 
no account of that company, — perhaps never listen to a 
word they would say, all day long ! 

7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, 
that the apathy with which we regard this company of the 



^> 



14 SESAME AND LILIES. 

noble, who are praying us to listen to them ; and the 
passion with which we pursue the company, probably of the 
ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, 
are grounded in this, — that we can see the faces of the 
living men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, with 
which we desire to become familiar. But it is not so. Sup- 
pose you never were to see their faces;- — suppose you 
could be put behind a screen in the statesman's cabinet, or 
the prince's chamber, would you not be glad to listen to 
their words, though you were forbidden to advance beyond 
the screen? And when the screen is only a little less, 
folded in two instead of four, and you can be hidden behind 
the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen all 
day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, deter- 
mined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men ; — this station 
of audience, and honorable privy council, you despise ! 

8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the living 
people talk of things that are passing, and are of immediate 
interest to you, that you desire to hear them. Nay ; that 
cannot be so, for the living people will themselves tell you 
about passing matters, much better in their writings than in 
their careless talk. But I admit that this motive does 
influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid and epheme- 
ral writings to slow and enduring writings, — books, properly 
o called. For all books are divisible into two classes, the 
books of the hour, and the books of all time. Mark this 
distinction — at is not one of quality only. It is not merely 
the bad book that does not last, and the good one that does. 
It is a distinction of species. There are good books for 
the hour, and good ones for all time ; bad books for the 
hour, and bad ones for all time. I must define the two 
kinds before I go farther. 

^ 9. The good book of the hour, then, — I do not speak 
of the bad ones, — is simply the useful or pleasant talk of 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. I 5 

some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, 
printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you 
need to know ; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's 
present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels ; 
good-humored and witty discussions of question ; lively or 
pathetic story-telling in the form of novel ; firm fact-telling, 
by the real agents concerned in the events of passing 
history; — all these books of the hour, multiplying among 
us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar 
possession of the present age ; we ought to be entirely 
thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we 
make no good use of them. But we make the worst possi- 
ble use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books : 
for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely 
letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend's letter 
may be delightful, or necessary, to-day : whether worth 
keeping or not, is to be considered. The newspaper may 
be entirely proper at breakfast time, but assuredly it is not 
reading for all day. So, though bound up in a volume, the 
long letter which gives you so pleasant an account of the 
inns, and roads, and weather last year at such a place, or 
which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real 
circumstances of such and such events, however valuable 
for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense of 
the word, a "book" at all, nor, in the real sense, to be 
"read." A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a 
written thing ; and written, not with the view of mere com- 
munication, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed 
only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people 
at once; if he could, he would — the volume is mere multi- 
plication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in 
India ; if you could, you would ; you write instead : that is 
mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to 
multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to 



1 6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he 
perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So 
far as he knows, no one has yet said it ; so far as he knows, 
no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and 
melodiously if he may ; clearly, at all events. In the sum 
of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, 
manifest to him ; — this, the piece of true knowledge, or 
sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted 
him to seize. He would fain set it down forever ; engrave 
it on rock, if he could ; saying, " This is the best of me ; 
for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, 
like another ; my life was as the vapor, and is not ; but this 
I saw and knew : this, if anything of mine, is worth your 
memory." That is his " writing " ; it is, in his small 
human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is 
in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a "Book." 

10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so written. 

But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, 
or at all in kindness ? or do you think there is never any 
honesty or benevolence in wise people ? None of us, I 
hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit 
of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, 
that bit is his book, or his piece of art. 1 It is mixed always 
with evil fragments — ill-done, redundant, affected work. 
But if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true 
bits, and those are the book. 

ii. Now books of this kind have been written in all ages 
by their greatest men : — by great readers, great statesmen, 
and great thinkers. These are all at your choice ; and Life 
is short. You have heard as much before ; — yet have you 
measured and mapped out this short life and its possibil- 
ities ? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot 

1 Note this sentence carefully, and compare the Queeti of the Air, 
§ 1 06. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. I J 

read that — that what you lose to-day you cannot gain 
to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, 
or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and 
kings ; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy con- 
sciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle 
with the hungry and common crowd for entree here, and 
audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open 
to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as 
its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and 
time ? Into that you may enter always ; in that you may 
take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, 
once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your 
own fault ; by your aristocracy of companionship there, 
your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and 
the motives with which you strive to take high place in the 
society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and 
sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take 
in this company of the Dead. 

12. "The place you desire," and the place you fit your- 
self for, I must also say ; because, observe, this court of the 
past differs from all living aristocracy in this : — it is open 
to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will 
bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of 
those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar 
person ever enters there. At the portieres of that silent 
Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief question, Do you 
deserve to enter ? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion 
of nobles ? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do 
you long for the conversation of the wise ? Learn to under- 
stand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms ? — no. 
If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The 
living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher 
explain his thought to you with considerate pain ; but here 
we neither feign nor interpret ; you must rise to the level of 



1 8 SESAME AND LILIES. 

our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share 
our feelings, if you would recognize our presence." 

13. This; then, is what you have. to do, and I admit that 
it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you 
are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They 
scorn your ambition. You must love them, and show your 
love in these two following ways : 

I. — ■ First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to 
enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe ; 
not to find your own expressed by them. If the person 
who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not 
read it ; if he be, he will think differently from you in many 
respects. 

Very ready we are to say of a book, "How good this is 
■ — ■ that's exactly what I think ! " But the right feeling is, 
." How strange that is ! I never thought of that before, and 
yet I see it is true ; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, some 
day." But whether thus submissively or not, at least be 
sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to 
find yours. Judge it afterwards, if you think yourself quali- 
fied to do so ; but ascertain it first. And be sure also, if 
the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his 
meaning all at once ; • — nay, that at his whole meaning you 
will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that he 
does not say what he means, and in strong words too ; but 
he cannot say it all ; and what is more strange, will not, 
but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may 
be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, 
nor analyze that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men 
which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They 
do not give it to you by way of help, but of reward ; and 
will make themselves sure that you deserve it before they 
allow you to reach it. But it is the same with the physical 
type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 1 9 

reason why the electric forces of the earth should not carry 
whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain 
tops, so that kings and people might know that all the gold 
they could get was there ; and without any trouble of dig- 
ging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, 
and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does not 
manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in the earth, 
nobody knows where : you may dig long and find none ; 
you must dig painfully to find any. 

14. And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. 
"When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, 
" Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would ? 
Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in 
good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my 
breath good, and my temper ? " And, keeping the figure 
a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thor- 
oughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the 
author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which 
you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And 
your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning ; your 
smelting-furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope 
to get at any good author's meaning without those tools 
and that fire ; often you will need sharpest, finest chiseling, 
and patientest fusing, before you can gather one grain of 
the metal. 

15. And therefore, first of all, I tell you, earnestly and 
authoritatively (I know I am right in this), you must get 
into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring 
yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay letter 
by letter. For though it is only by reason of the opposition 
of letters in the function of signs, to sounds in the function 
of signs, that the study of books is called "literature," and 
that a man versed in it is called, by the consent of nations, 
a man of letters instead of a man of books, or of words, you 



20 SESAME AND LILIES. 

may yet connect with that accidental nomenclature this real 
fact ; — that you might read all the books in the British 
Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an 
utterly " illiterate," uneducated person ; but that if you read 
ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, 
with real accuracy, — you are forevermore in some measure 
an educated person. The entire difference between educa- 
tion and non-education (as regards the merely intellectual 
part of it) consists in this accuracy. A well-educated 
gentleman may not know many languages, — may not be 
able to speak any but his own, — may have read very few 
books. But whatever language he knows, he knows pre- 
cisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly; 
above all, he is learned in the peerage of words ; knows the 
words of true descent and ancient blood at a glance, from 
words of modern canaille ; remembers all their ancestry, 
their intermarriages, distant relationships, and the extent to 
which they were admitted, and offices they held, among the 
national noblesse of words at any time, and in any country. 
But an uneducated person may know, by memory, many 
languages, and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word 
of any, — not a word even of his own. An ordinarily clever 
and sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at 
most ports ; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any 
language to be known for an illiterate person : so also the 
accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at 
once mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so con- 
clusively admitted by educated persons, that a false accent 
or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any 
civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of 
inferior standing forever. 

1 6. And this is right ; but it is a pity that the accuracy 
insisted on is not greater, and required to a serious purpose. 
It is right that a false Latin quantity should excite a smile 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 2 1 

in the House of Commons ; but it is wrong that a false 
English meaning should not excite a frown there. Let the 
accent of words be watched ; and closely : let their mean- 
ing be watched more closely still, and fewer will do the 
work. A few words well chosen and distinguished, will do 
work that a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, 
equivocally, in the function of another. Yes ; and words, 
if they are not watched, will do deadly work sometimes. 
There are masked words droning and skulking about us in 
Europe just now, — (there never were so many, owing to 
the spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious 
" information," or rather deformation, everywhere, and to 
the teaching of catechisms and phrases at schools instead 
of human meanings) — there are masked words abroad, I 
say, which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, 
and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, 
fancying they mean this or that, or the other, of things 
dear to them : for such words wear chameleon cloaks — 
"groundlion" cloaks, of the color of the ground of any 
man's fancy : on that ground they lie in wait, and rend him 
with a spring from it. There never were creatures of prey 
so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poi- 
soners so deadly, as these masked words ; they are the 
unjust stewards of all men's ideas : whatever fancy or 
favorite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his 
favorite masked word to take care of for him ; the word at 
last comes to have an infinite power over him, — you cannot 
get at him but by its ministry. 

17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as the English, 
there is a fatal power of equivocation put into men's hands, 
almost whether they will or no, in being able to use Greek 
or Latin words for an idea when they want it to be awful ; 
and Saxon or otherwise common words when they want it 
to be vulgar. What a singular and salutary effect, for 



22 SESAME AND LILIES. 

instance, would be produced on the minds of people who 
are in the habit of taking the Form of the " Word " they 
live by, for the Power of which that Word tells them, if we 
always either retained, or refused, the Greek form " biblos," 
or "biblion," as the right expression for "book" — instead 
of employing it only in the one instance in which Ave wish 
to give dignity to the idea, and translating it into English 
everywhere else. How wholesome it would be for many 
simple persons, if, in such places (for instance) as Acts xix. 
19, we retained the Greek expression, instead of translating 
it, and they had to read — " Many of them also which used 
curious arts, brought their bibles together, and burnt them 
before all men ; and they counted the price of them, and 
found it fifty thousand pieces of silver ! " Or if, on the 
other hand, we translated where we retain it, and always 
spoke of "The Holy Book," instead of "Holy Bible," it 
might come into more heads than it does at present, that 
the Word of God, by which the heavens were, of old, and 
by which they are now kept in store, 1 cannot be made a 
present of to anybody in morocco binding ; nor sown on 
any wayside by help either of steam plough or steam press ; 
but is nevertheless being offered to us daily, and by us with 
contumely refused ; and sown in us daily, and by us, as 
instantly as may be, choked. 

18. So, again, consider what effect has been produced 
on the English vulgar mind by the use of the sonorous 
Latin form " damno," in translating the Greek KaraKpivu), 
when people charitably wish to make it forcible ; and the 
substitution of the temperate "condemn" for it, when they 
choose to keep it gentle ; and what notable sermons have 
been preached by illiterate clergymen on — " He ' that 
believeth not shall be damned " ; though they would shrink 
with horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, "The saving of his 

1 2 Peter, iii. 5-7. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 23 

house, by which he damned the world " : or John viii. 10, 11, 
"Woman, hath no man damned thee? She saith, No man, 
Lord. Jesus answered her. Neither do I damn thee ; go 
and sin no more." And divisions in the mind of Europe, 
which have cost seas of blood and in the defense of which 
the noblest souls of men have been cast away in frantic 
desolation, countless as forest leaves — though, in the heart 
of them, founded on deeper causes — have nevertheless been 
rendered practicably possible, namely, by the European 
adoption of the Greek word for a public meeting, "ecclesia," 
to give peculiar respectability to such meetings, when held 
for religious purposes ; and other collateral equivocations, 
such as the vulgar English one of using the word "priest" 
as a contraction for " presbyter." 

19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the 
habit you must form. Nearly every word in your language 
has been first a word of some other language — of Saxon, 
German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of eastern 
and primitive dialects). And many words have been all 
these ; — that is to say,- have been Greek first, Latin next, 
French or German next, and English last : undergoing a 
certain change of sense and use on the lips of each nation ; 
but retaining a deep vital meaning, which all good scholars 
feel in employing them, even at this day. If you do not 
know the Greek alphabet, learn it; young or old — girl or 
boy — whoever you maybe, if you think of reading seriously 
(which, of course, implies that you have some leisure at 
command), learn your Greek alphabet ; then get good 
dictionaries of all these languages, and whenever you are 
in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. Read Max 
Midler's lectures thoroughly, to begin with ; and, after that, 
never let a word escape you that looks suspicious. It is 
severe work ; but you will find it, even at first, interesting, 
and at last, endlessly amusing. And the general gain 



24 SESAME AND LILIES. 

to your character, in power and precision, will be quite 
incalculable. 

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know, 
Greek or Latin, or French. It takes a whole life to learn 
any language perfectly. But you can easily ascertain the 
meanings through which the English word has passed ; and 
those which in a good writer's work it must still bear. 

20. And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with 
your permission, read a few lines of a true book with you, 
carefully ; and see what will come out of them. I will take 
a book perfectly known to you all. No English words are 
more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have been read with less 
sincerity. I will take these few following lines of Lycidas : 

" Last came, and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), 
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 
' How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, 
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 
Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least 
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 
What recks it them? What need they ? They are sped ; 
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; 
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.' " 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 2$ 

Let us think over this passage, and examine its 
words. 

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St. 
Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but the very 
types of it which Protestants usually refuse most pas- 
sionately ? His " mitred " locks ! Milton was no Bishop- 
lover ; how comes St. Peter to be "mitred?" "Two 
massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys 
claimed by the Bishops of Rome, and is it acknowledged 
here by Milton only in a poetical license, for the sake of its 
picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the golden 
keys to help his effect ? Do not think it. Great men do 
not play stage tricks with doctrines of life and death : only 
little men do that. Milton means what he says ; and means 
it with his might too — is going to put the whole strength 
of his spirit presently into the saying of it. For though not 
a lover of false bishops, he was a lover of true ones ; and 
the Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and head of 
true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, " I will 
give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven " quite 
honestly. Puritan though he be, he would not blot it out 
of the book because there have been bad bishops ; nay, in 
order to understand him, we must understand that verse 
first ; it will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under 
our breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is 
a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in mind by 
all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to reason on 
it if we go on a little farther, and come back to it. For 
clearly this marked insistence on the power of the true 
episcopate is to make us feel more weightily what is to be 
charged against the false claimants of episcopate ; or 
generally, against false claimants of power and rank in the 
body of the clergy ; they who, " for their bellies' sake, 
creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold." 



26 SESAME AND LILIES. 

21. Never think Milton uses those three words to fill up 
his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the three ; 
specially those three, and no more than those — " creep," 
and "intrude," and "climb"; no other words would or 
could serve the turn, and no more could be added. For 
they exhaustively comprehend the three classes, corre- 
spondent to the three characters, of men who dishonestly 
seek ecclesiastical power. First, those who " creep " into 
the fold ; who do not care for office, nor name, but for 
secret influence, and do all things occultly and cunningly, 
consenting to any servility of office or conduct, so only that 
they may intimately discern, and unawares direct, the minds 
of men. Then those who "intrude" (thrust, that is) them- 
selves into the fold, who by natural insolence of heart, and 
stout eloquence of tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self- 
assertion, obtain hearing and authority with the common 
crowd. Lastly, those who " climb," who by labor and 
learning, both stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in 
the cause of their own ambition, gain high dignities and 
authorities, and become " lords over the heritage," though 
not " ensamples to the flock." 

22. Now go on : — 

" Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
Blind mouths — " 

I pause again, for this is a strange expression ; a broken 
metaphor, one might think, careless and un scholarly. 

Not so : its very audacity and pithiness are intended to 
make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those 
two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries 
of right character, in the two great offices of the Church — 
those of bishop and pastor. 

A " Bishop " means a "person who sees." 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 2J 

A "Pastor" means a "person who feeds." 

The most unbishoply character a man can have is there- 
fore to be Blind. 

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be 
fed, — to be a Mouth. 

Take the two reverses together, and you have " blind 
mouths." We may advisably follow out this idea a little. 
Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops 
desiring power more than light. They want authority, not 
outlook. Whereas their real office it not to rule ; though it 
may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke ; it is the king's 
office to rule ; the bishop's office is to oversee the flock ; to 
number it, sheep by sheep ; to be ready always to give full 
account of it. Now it is clear he cannot give account of 
the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the bodies of 
his flock. The first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to 
do is at least to put himself in a position in which, at any 
moment, he can obtain the history, from childhood, of every 
living soul in his diocese, and of its present state. Down 
in that back street, Bill and Nancy, knocking each other's 
teeth out ! — Does the bishop know all about it ? Has he 
his eye upon them ? Has he /tad his eye upon them ? Can 
he circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit 
of beating Nancy about the head ? If he cannot, he is no 
bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury steeple ; 
he is no bishop, — he has sought to be at the helm instead 
of the masthead ; he has no sight of things. " Nay," you 
say, "it is not his duty to look after Bill in the back street." 
What ! the fat sheep that have full fleeces — you think it is 
only those he should look after, while (go back to your 
Milton) "the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
besides what the grim wolf, with privy paw" (bishops know- 
ing nothing about it) " daily devours apace, and nothing 
said " ? 



28 SESAME AND LILIES. 

"But that's not our idea of a bishop." 1 Perhaps not; 
but it was St. Paul's ; and it was Milton's. They may be 
right, or we may be ; but we must not think we are reading 
either one or the other by putting our meaning into their 
words. 

23. I go on. 

" But, swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 

This is to meet the vulgar answer that " if the poor are 
not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls ; 
they have spiritual food." 

And Milton says, " They have no such thing as spiritual 
food ; they are only swollen with wind." At first you may 
think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. But again, 
it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up your Latin 
and Greek dictionaries, and find out the meaning of 
" Spirit." It is only a contraction of the Latin word 
"breath," and an indistinct translation of the Greek word 
for " wind." The same word is used in writing, " The wind 
bloweth where it listeth "; and in writing, " So is every one 
that is born of the Spirit"; born of the breath, that is ; for 
it means the breath of God, in soul and body. We have 
the true sense of it in our words "inspiration" and "expire." 
Now, there ate two kinds of breath with which the flock 
may be filled ; God's breath, and man's. The breath of 
God is health, and life, and peace to them, as the air of 
heaven is to the flocks on the hills ; but man's breath — 
the word which he calls spiritual, — is disease and contagion 
to them, as the fog of the fen. They rot inwardly with it ; 
they are puffed up by it, as a dead body by the vapors of 
its own decomposition. This is literally true of all false 
religious teaching ; the first and last, and fatalest sign of it 

1 Compare the 13th Letter in Time and Tide. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 20, 

is that " puffing up." Your converted children, who teach 
their parents ; your converted convicts, who teach honest 
men ; your converted dunces, who, having lived in cretinous 
stupefaction half their lives, suddenly awakening to the fact 
of there being a God, fancy themselves therefore His 
peculiar people and messengers ; your sectarians of every 
species, small and great, Catholic or Protestant, of high 
church or low, in so far as they think themselves exclusively 
in the right and others wrong ; and preeminently, in every 
sect, those who hold that men can be saved by thinking 
rightly instead of doing rightly, by word instead of act, and 
wish instead of work : — these are the true fog children — 
clouds, these, without water ; bodies, these, of, putrescent 
vapor and skin, without blood or flesh : blown bag-pipes 
for the fiends to pipe with — corrupt, and corrupting, — 
" Swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 

24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power 
of the keys, for now we can understand them. Note the 
difference between Milton and Dante in their interpretation 
of this power : for once, the latter is weaker in thought ; he 
supposes both the keys to be of the gate of heaven ; one is 
of gold, the other of silver : they are given by St. Peter to 
the sentinel angel ; and it is not easy to determine the 
meaning either of the substances of the three steps of the 
gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes one, of gold, 
the key of heaven ; the other, of iron, the key of the 
prison in which the wicked teachers are to be bound who 
''have taken away the key of knowledge, yet entered not in 
themselves." 

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are to 
see and feed ; and, of all who do so it is said, " He that 
watereth, shall be watered also himself." But the reverse 
is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be withered him- 
self, and he that seeth not, shall himself be shut out of 



3<D SESAME AND LILIES. 

sight, — shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that 
prison opens here, as well as hereafter : he who is to be 
bound in heaven must first be bound on earth. That com- 
mand to the strong angels, of which the rock-apostle is the 
image, "Take him, and bind him hand and foot, and cast 
him out," issues, in its measure, against the teacher, for 
every help withheld, and for every truth refused, and for 
every falsehood enforced ; so that he is more strictly 
fettered the more he fetters, and farther outcast, as he more 
and more misleads, till at last the bars of the iron cage 
close upon him, and as " the golden opes, the iron shuts 
amain." 

25. We have got something out of the lines, I think, and 
much more is yet to be found in them ; but we have done 
enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-word 
examination of your author which is rightly called " read- 
ing " ; watching every accent and expression, and putting 
ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating our 
own personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be 
able assuredly to say, "Thus Milton thought," not "Thus I 
thought, in mis-reading Milton." And by this process you 
will gradually come to attach less weight to your own " Thus 
I thought " at other times. You will begin to perceive that 
what you thought was a matter of no serious importance ; — 
that your thoughts on any subject are not perhaps the 
clearest and wisest that could be arrived at thereupon : — in 
fact, that unless you are a very singular person, you cannot 
be said to have any "thoughts" at all ; that you have no 
materials for them, in any serious matters ; 1 — no right to 
"think," but only to try to learn more of the facts. Nay, 
most probably all your life (unless, as I said, you are a 

1 Modern " Education " for the most part signifies giving people the 
faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance to 
them. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 3 1 

singular person | you will have no legitimate right to an 
" opinion "' on any business, except that instantly under 
your hand. What must of necessity be done, you can 
always find out, beyond question, how to do. Have you a 
house to keep in order, a commodity to sell, a field to 
plough, a ditch to cleanse ? There need be no two opinions 
about these proceedings ; it is at your peril if you have not 
much more than an " opinion " on the way to manage such 
matters. And also, outside of your own business, there are 
one or two subjects on which you are bound to have but one 
opinion. That roguery and lying are objectionable, and 
are instantly to be iiogged out of the way whenever dis- 
covered ; — that covetousness and love of quarreling are 
dangerous dispositions even in children, and deadly dis- 
positions in men and nations ; — that in the end, the God 
of heaven and earth loves active, modest, and kind people, 
and hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel ones ; — on these 
general facts you are bound to have but one and that a 
very strong, opinion. For the rest, respecting religions, 
governments, sciences, arts, you will find that, on the whole, 
you can know nothing, — judge nothing ; that the best you 
can do, even though you may be a well-educated person, is 
to be silent, and strive to be wiser every day, and to under- 
stand a little more of the thoughts of others, which so soon 
as you try to do honestly, you will discover that the thoughts 
even of the wisest are very little more than pertinent 
questions. To put the difficulty into a clear shape, and 
exhibit to you the grounds for ///decision, that is all they 
can generally do for you ! — and well for them and for us, 
if indeed they are able " to mix the music with our thoughts, 
and sadden us with heavenly doubts." This writer, from 
whom I have been reading to you, is not among the first or 
wisest : he sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and therefore it 
is easy to find out his full meaning ; but with the greater 



32 SESAME AND LILIES. 

men, you cannot fathom their meaning; they do not even 
wholly measure it themselves, ■ — it is so wide. Suppose I 
had asked you, for instance, to seek for Shakespeare's 
opinion, instead of Milton's, on this matter of Church 
authority? — or for Dante's? Have any of you, at this 
instant, the least idea what either thought about it ? Have 
you ever balanced the scene with the bishops in Richard 
III. against the character of Cranmer? the description of 
St. Francis and St. Dominic against that of him who made 
Virgil wonder to gaze upon him, — " disteso, tanto vilmente, 
nell' eterno esilio"; or of him whom Dante stood beside, 
" come '1 frate che confessa lo perfido assassin ? " x Shake- 
speare and Alighieri knew men better than most of us, I 
presume ! They were both in the midst of the main 
struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers. They 
had an opinion, we may guess. But where is it? Bring it 
into court ! Put Shakespeare's or Dante's creed into arti- 
cles, and send it up for trial by the Ecclesiastical Courts ! 

26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for many and 
many a day, to come at the real purposes and teaching of 
these great men ; but a very little honest study of them will 
enable you to perceive that what you took for your own 
"judgment" was mere chance prejudice, and drifted, help- 
less, entangled weed of castaway thought : nay, you will see 
that most men's minds are indeed little better than rough 
heath wilderness, neglected and stubborn, partly barren, 
partly overgrown with pestilent brakes, and venomous, wind- 
sown herbage of evil surmise ; that the first thing you have 
to do for them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to 
set fire to this; burn all the jungle into wholesome ash 
heaps, and then plough and sow. All the true literary work 
before you, for life, must begin with obedience to that order, 
" Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." 

1 Inf. xxiii. 125, 126; xix. 49, 50. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 33 

27. II. 1 — Having then faithfully listened to the great 
teachers, that you may enter into their Thoughts, you have 
yet this higher advance to make ; — you have to enter into 
their Hearts. As you go to them first for clear sight, so 
you must stay with them, that you may share at last their 
just and mighty Passion. Passion, or " sensation." I am 
not afraid of the word ; still less of the thing. You have 
heard many outcries against sensation lately ; but, I can tell 
you, it is not less sensation we want, but more. The 
ennobling difference between one man and another, — 
between one animal and another, — is precisely in this, that 
one feels more than another. If we were sponges, perhaps 
sensation might not be easily got for us ; if we were earth- 
worms, liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, 
perhaps too much sensation might not be good for us. But, 
being human creatures, it is good for us ; nay, we are only 
human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honor is 
precisely in proportion to our passion. 

28. You know I said of that great and pure society of 
the dead, that it would allow " no vain or vulgar person to 
enter there." What do you think I meant by a "vulgar" 
person? What do you yourselves mean by "vulgarity"? 
You will find it a fruitful subject of thought ; but, briefly, 
the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. 
Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and 
undeveloped bluntness of body and mind ; but in true 
inbred vulgarity, there is a deathful callousness, which, in 
extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit 
and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, 
and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead 
heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, 
that men become vulgar ; they are forever vulgar, precisely 
in proportion as they are incapable of sympathy, — of quick 

1 Compare \ 13 above. 



34 SESAME AND LILIES. 

understanding, — of all that, in deep insistence on the com- 
mon, but most accurate term, may be called the "tact" or 
" touch-faculty " of body and soul ; that tact which the 
Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above 
all creatures ;— fineness and fullness of sensation beyond 
reason ; — the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason 
can but determine what is true : — it is the God-given pas- 
sion of humanity which alone can recognize what God has 
made good. 

29. We come then to the great concourse of the Dead, 
not merely to know from them what is True, but chiefly to 
feel with them what is just. Now, to feel with them, we 
must be like them ; and none of us can become that without 
pains. As the true knowledge is disciplined and tested 
knowledge, — not the first thought that comes, — so the 
true passion is disciplined and tested passion, — not the 
first passion that comes. The first that come are the vain, 
the false, the treacherous ; if you yield to them they will 
lead you wildly and far in vain pursuit, in hollow enthusiasm, 
till you have no true purpose and no true passion left. Not 
that any feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but 
only wrong when undisciplined. Its nobility is in its force 
and justice ; it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry 
cause. There is a mean wonder, as of a child who sees a 
juggler tossing golden balls, and this is base, if you will. 
But do you think that the Avonder is ignoble, or the sensa- 
tion less, with which every human soul is called to watch 
the golden balls of heaven tossed through the night by the 
Hand that made them? There is a mean curiosity, as of a 
child opening a forbidden door, or a servant prying into her 
master's business ; — and a noble curiosity, questioning, in 
the front of danger, the source of the great river beyond the 
sand, — the place of the great continents beyond the sea ; 
— a nobler curiosity still, which questions of the source of 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 



35 



the River of Life, and of the space of the Continent of 
Heaven, — things which " the angels desire to look into." 
So the anxiety is ignoble, with which you linger over the 
course and catastrophe of an idle tale ; but do you think 
the anxiety is less, or greater, with which you watch, or 
ought to watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with the life 
of an agonized nation ? Alas ! it is the narrowness, selfish- 
ness, minuteness, of your sensation that you have to deplore 
in England at this day ; — sensation which spends itself in 
bouquets and speeches ; in revelings and junketings ; in 
sham fights and gay puppet shows, while you can look on 
and see noble nations murdered, man by man, without an 
effort or a tear. 

30. I said "■minuteness" and "selfishness" of sensa- 
tion, but -in a word, I ought to have said "injustice" or 
"unrighteousness" of sensation. For as in nothing is a 
gentleman better to be discerned from a vulgar person, 
so in nothing is a gentle nation (such nations have been) 
better to be discerned from a mob, than in this, — that 
their feelings are constant and just, results of due contem- 
plation, and of equal thought. You can talk a mob into 
anything; its feelings may be — usually are — on the whole, 
generous and right ; but it has no foundation for them, no 
hold of them ; you may tease or tickle it into any, at your 
pleasure ; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching 
an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it 
will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on ; — nothing 
so great but it will forget in an hour, when the fit is past. 
But a gentleman's or a gentle nation's, passions are just, 
measured and continuous. A great nation, for instance, 
does not spend its entire national wits for a couple of 
months in weighing evidence of a single ruffian's having 
done a single murder; and for a couple of years see its 
own children murder each other by their thousands or tens 



36 SESAME AND LILIES. 

of thousands a day, considering only what the effect is 
likely to be on the price of cotton, and caring nowise to 
determine which side of battle is in the wrong. Neither 
does a great nation send its poor little boys to jail for 
stealing six walnuts ; and allow its bankrupts to steal their 
hundreds or thousands with a bow, and its bankers, rich 
with poor men's savings, to close their doors " under cir- 
cumstances over which they have no control," with a "by 
your leave"; and large landed estates to be bought by 
men who have made their money by going with armed 
steamers up and down the China Seas, selling opium at 
the cannon's mouth, and altering, for the benefit of the 
foreign nation, the common highwayman's demand of 
"your money or your life," into that of "your money ff«(/ 
your life." Neither does a great nation allow the lives 
of its innocent poor to be parched out of them by fog 
fever, and rotted out of them by dunghill plague, for the 
sake of sixpence a life extra per week to its landlords ; l 
and then debate, with driveling tears, and diabolical sym- 
pathies, whether it ought not piously to save, and nursingly 
cherish, the lives of its murderers. Also, a great nation 
having made up its mind that hanging is quite the whole- 
somest process for its homicides in general, can yet with 
mercy distinguish between the degrees of guilt in homi- 
cides ; and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched 
wolf-cubs on the blood-track of an unhappy crazed boy, 
or gray-haired clodpate Othello, "perplexed i' the extreme," 
at the very moment that it is sending a Minister of the 
Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting 
young girls in their father's sight, and killing noble youths 
in cool blood, faster than a country butcher kills lambs in 

1 See note at end of lecture. I have put it in large type, because the 
course of matters since it was written has made it perhaps better worth 
attention. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 37 

spring. And, lastly, a great nation does not mock Heaven 
and its Powers, by pretending belief in a revelation which 
asserts the love of money to be the root of all evil, and 
declaring, at the same time, that it is actuated, and intends 
to be actuated, in all chief national deeds and measures, by 
no other love. 

31. My friends, I do not know why any of us should 
talk about reading. We want some sharper discipline 
than that of reading ; but, at all events, be assured, we 
cannot read. No reading is possible for a people with 
its mind in this state. No sentence of any great writer is 
intelligible to them. It is simply and sternly impossible 
for the English public, at this moment, to understand any 
thoughtful writing, — so incapable of thought has it become 
in its insanity of avarice. Happily, our disease is, as 
yet, little worse than this incapacity of thought ; it is not 
corruption of the inner nature ; we ring true still, when 
anything strikes home to us ; and though the idea that 
everything should "pay" has infected our every purpose so 
deeply, that even when we would play the good Samaritan, 
we never take out our twopence and give them to the host, 
without saying, " When I come again, thou shalt give me 
fourpence," there is a capacity of noble passion left in our 
hearts' core. We show it in our work,- — in our war, — even 
in those unjust domestic affections which make us furious 
at a small private wrong, while we are polite to a boundless 
public one : we are still industrious to the last hour of the 
day, though we add the gambler's fury to the laborer's 
patience ; we are still brave to the death, though incapable 
of discerning true cause for battle ; and are still true in 
affection to our own flesh, to the death, as the sea- 
monsters are, and the rock-eagles. And there is hope for 
a nation while this can be still said of it. As long as it 
holds its life in its hand, ready to give it for its honor 



38 SESAME AND LILIES. 

(though a foolish honor), for its love (though a selfish love), 
and for its business (though a base business), there is hope 
for it. But hope only ; for this instinctive, reckless virtue 
cannot last. No nation can last, which has made a mob 
of itself, however generous at heart. It must discipline its 
passions, and direct them, or they will discipline it, one 
day, with scorpion whips. Above all, a nation cannot last 
as a money-making mob : it cannot Avith impunity, ■ — it can- 
not with existence, — go on despising literature, despising 
science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, 
and concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you think these 
are harsh or wild words? Have patience with me but a little 
longer. I will prove their truth to you, clause by clause. 

32. I. — I say first we have despised literature. What do 
we, as a nation, care about books ? How much do you 
think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, 
as compared with what we spend on our horses ? If a man 
spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad — a biblio- 
maniac. But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though 
men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do 
not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, 
to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of 
the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and pri- 
vate, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its 
wine-cellars ? What position would its expenditure on 
literature take, as compared with its expenditure on lux- 
urious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for 
the body ; now a good book contains such food inex- 
haustibly ; it is a provision for life, and for the best part of 
us ; yet how long most people would look at the best book 
before they would give the price of a large turbot for it ! 
though there have been men who have pinched their 
stomachs and bared their backs, to buy a book, whose 
libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than 



OF RINGS TREASURIES. 39 

most men's dinners arc. We are few of us put to such 
trial, and more the pity ; for, indeed, a precious thing is 
all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or 
economy ; and if public libraries were half as costly as 
public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what brace- 
lets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes sus- 
pect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and 
sparkling ; whereas the very cheapness of literature is 
making even wise people forget that if a book is worth 
reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything 
which is not worth much : nor is it serviceable, until it has 
been read, and reread, and loved, and loved again ; and 
marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in 
it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory, 
or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. 
Bread of flour is good : but there is bread, sweet as honey, 
if we would eat it, in a good book ; and the family must be 
poor indeed which, once in their lives, cannot, for such 
multipliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call 
ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough 
to thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries ! 

33. II. — I say we have despised science. "What ! " you 
exclaim, "are we not foremost in all discovery, 1 and is not 
the whole world giddy by reason, or unreason, of our inven- 
tions ? " Yes ; but do you suppose that is national work ? 
That work is all done in spite of the nation ; by private 
people's zeal and money. We are glad enough, indeed, to 
make our profit of science ; we snap up anything in the 
way of a scientific bone that has meat on it, eagerly 
enough ; but if the scientific man comes for a bone or a 
crust to us, that is another story. What have we publicly 

1 Since this was written, the answer has become definitely — No; 
we have surrendered the field of Arctic discovery to the Continental 
nations, as being ourselves too poor to pay for ships. 



4<D SESAME AND LILIES. 

done for science ? We are obliged to know what o'clock it 
is, for the safety of our ships, and therefore we pay for an 
observatory ; and we allow ourselves, in the person of our 
Parliament, to be annually tormented into doing something, 
in a slovenly way, for the British Museum ; sullenly appre- 
hending that to be a place for keeping stuffed birds in, to 
amuse our children. If anybody will pay for his own 
telescope, and resolve another nebula, we cackle over the 
discernment as if it were our own ; if one in ten thousand 
of our hunting squires suddenly perceives that the earth was 
indeed made to be something else than a portion for foxes, 
and burrows in it himself, and tells us where the gold is, 
and where the coals, we understand that there is some use 
in that ; and very properly knight him : but is the accident 
of his having found out how to employ himself usefully any 
credit to us ? (The negation of such discovery among his 
brother squires may perhaps be some ^credit to us, if we 
would consider of it.) But if you doubt these generalities, 
here is one fact for us all to meditate upon, illustrative of 
our love of science. Two years ago there was a collection 
of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria ; the best 
in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfect- 
ness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a whole 
kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by 
that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market 
worth, among private buyers, would probably have been 
some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered to 
the English nation for seven hundred : but we would not 
give seven hundred, and the whole series would have been 
in the Munich Museum at this moment, if Professor Owen 1 

1 I state this fact without Professor Owen's permission: which of 
course he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it ; but 
I consider it so important that the public should be aware of the fact 
that I do what seems to be right though rude. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 4 1 

had not, with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting 
of the British public in person of its representatives, got 
leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself 
become answerable for the other three ! which the said 
public will doubtless pay him eventually, but sulkily, and 
caring nothing about the matter all the while ; only always 
ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg 
of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your annual 
expenditure for public purposes (a third of it for military 
apparatus), is at least fifty millions. Now 700/. is to 
50,000,000/. roughly, as seven pence to two thousand 
pounds. Suppose then, a gentleman of unknown income, 
but whose wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that 
he spent two thousand a year on his park-walls and footmen 
only, professes himself fond of science ; and that one of his 
servants comes eagerly to tell him that an unique collection 
of fossils, giving clue to a new era of creation, is to be had 
for the sum of seven pence sterling ; and that the gentle- 
man, who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a 
year on his park, answers, after keeping his servant waiting- 
several months, "Well ! I'll give you four pence for them, if 
you will be answerable for the extra three pence yourself, 
till next year ! " 

34. III. — I say you have despised Art ! "What! " you 
again answer, "have we not Art exhibitions, miles long? 
and do we not pay thousands of pounds for single pictures ? 
and have we not Art schools and institutions, more than 
ever nation had before ? " Yes, truly, but all that is for the 
sake of the shop. You would fain sell canvas as well as 
coals, and crockery as well as iron ; you would take every 
other nation's bread out of its mouth if you could ; 1 not 

1 That was our real idea of " Free Trade " — " All the trade to my- 
self." You find now that by "competition" other people can manage 
to sell something as well as you — -and now we call for Protection again. 
Wretches ! 



42 SESAME AND LILIES. 

being able to do that, your ideal of life is to stand in 
the thoroughfares of the world, like Ludgate apprentices, 
screaming to every passer-by, "What d'ye lack?" You 
know nothing of your own faculties or circumstances ; you 
fancy that, among your damp, flat fields of clay, you can 
have as quick art-fancy as the Frenchman among his 
bronzed vines, or the Italian under his volcanic cliffs ; — 
that art may be learned as book-keeping is, and when 
learned, will give you more books to keep. You care for 
pictures, absolutely, no more than you do for the bills 
pasted on your dead walls. There is always room on the 
walls for the bills to be read, — never for the pictures to 
be seen. You do not know what pictures you have (by 
repute) in the country, nor whether they are false or true, 
nor whether they are taken care of or not ; in foreign coun- 
tries, you calmly see the noblest existing pictures in the 
world rotting in abandoned wreck — (in Venice you saw the 
Austrian guns deliberately pointed at the palaces containing 
them), and if you heard that all the fine pictures in Europe 
were made into sand-bags to-morrow on the Austrian forts, 
it would not trouble you so much as the chance of a brace 
or two of game less in you own bags, in a day's shooting. 
That is your national love of Art. 

35. IV.- — You have despised Nature; that is to say, all 
the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery. The 
French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of 
France ; you have made race-courses of the cathedrals of 
the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in 
railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their altars. 1 
You have put a railroad bridge over the fall of Schaffhausen. 

1 I meant that the beautiful places of the world — Switzerland, Italy, 
South Germany, and so on — are, indeed, the truest cathedrals — places 
to be reverent in, and to worship in ; and that we only care to drive 
through them ; and to eat and drink at their most sacred places. 



of kings' treasuries. 43 

You have tunneled the cliffs of Lucerne by TelPs chapel ; 
you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of 
Geneva ; there is not a quiet valley in England that you 
have not filled with bellowing fire ; there is no particle left 
of English land which you have not trampled coal ashes 
into 1 — nor any foreign city in which the spread of your 
presence is not marked among its fair old streets and happy 
gardens by a consuming white leprosy of new hotels and 
perfumers' shops : the Alps themselves, which your own 
poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped 
poles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb,' 
and slide down again, with " shrieks of delight." When 
you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice 
to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their 
valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with 
cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive 
hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrow- 
fullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the 
deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in 
the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing 
rusty howitzers ; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich ex- 
pressing their Christian thanks for the gift of the vine, 
by assembling in knots in the "towers of the vineyards," 
and slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morning till 
evening. It is pitiful to have dim conceptions of beauty; 
more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions like these, 
of mirth. 

36. Lastly. You despise compassion. There is no need 
of words of mine for proof of this. I will merely print one 
of the newspaper paragraphs which I am in the habit of 
cutting out and throwing into my store-drawer ; here is one 

1 I was singularly struck, some years ago, by rinding all the river 
shore at Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its earth, from the mere 
drift of soot-laden air from places many miles away. 



44 SESAME AND LILIES. 

from a Daily Telegraph of an early date this year (1867) 
(date which, though by me carelessly left unmarked, is easily 
discoverable ; for on the back of the slip, there is the 
announcement that " yesterday the seventh of the special 
services of this year was performed by the Bishop of Ripon 
in St. Paul's ") ; it relates only one of such facts as happen 
now daily ; this, by chance, having taken a form in which it 
came before the coroner. I will print the paragraph in red. 
Be sure, the facts themselves are written in that color in 
a book which we shall all of us, literate or illiterate, have to 
read our page of, some day. 

" An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards, deputy 
coroner, at the White Horse Tavern, Christ Church, Spital- 
fields, respecting the death of Michael Collins, aged 58 
years. Mary Collins, a miserable-looking woman, said that 
she lived with the deceased and his son in a room at 2, 
Cobb's court, Christ Church. Deceased was aj translator ' 
of boots. Witness went out and bought old boots ; deceased 
and his son made them into good ones, and then witness 
sold them for what she could get at the shops, which was 
very little indeed. Deceased and his son used to work 
night and day to try and get a little bread and tea, and pay 
for the room (2s. a week), so as to keep the home together. 
On Friday night week, deceased got up from his bench and 
began to shiver. He threw down the boots, saying, ' Some- 
body else must finish them when I am gone, for I can do no 
more.' There was no fire, and he said, ' I would be better 
if I was warm.' Witness therefore took two pairs of trans- 
lated boots 1 to sell at the shop, but she could only get 14^/. 
for the two pairs, for the people at the shop said, 'We must 
have our profit.' Witness got i4.1bs. of coal and a little 

1 One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for the 
good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear 
no "translated" articles of dress. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 45 

tea and bread. Her son sat up the whole night to make 
the 'translations,' to get money, but deceased died on 
Saturday morning. The family never had enough to eat. — 
Coroner : ' It seems to me deplorable that you did not go 
into the workhouse.' Witness : 'We wanted the comforts 
of our little home.' A juror asked what the comforts were, 
for he only saw a little straw in the corner of the room, the 
windows of which were broken. The witness began to cry, 
and said that they had a quilt and other little things. The 
deceased said he never would go into the workhouse. In 
summer, when the season was good, they sometimes made 
as much as 10s. profit in the week. They then always 
saved towards the next week, which was generally a bad 
one. In winter they made not half so much. For three 
years they had been getting from bad to worse. — Cornelius 
Collins said that he had assisted his father since 1847. 
They used to work so far into the night that both nearly 
lost their eyesight. Witness now had a film over his eyes. 
Five years ago deceased applied to the parish for aid. The 
relieving officer gave him a 4-lb. loaf, and told him if he 
came again he should 'get the stones.' 1 That disgusted 

1 This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is curiously coin- 
cident in verbal form with a certain passage which some of us may 
remember. It may, perhaps, be well to preserve beside this paragraph 
another cutting out of my store-drawer, from the Morning Post, of 
about a parallel date, Friday, March 10th, 1865: — "The salons of 

Mme. C , who did the honors with clever imitative grace and 

elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts — in 
fact, with the same male company as one meets at the parties of the 
Princess Mettemich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English 
peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy 
the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor the 
supper-tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That your 
readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi- 
monde, I copy the menu of the supper, which was served to all the guests 
(about 200) seated at four o'clock. Choice Yquem, Johannisberg, I. at- 



46 SESAME AND LILIES. 

deceased, and he would have nothing to do with them since. 
They got worse and worse until last Friday week, when 
they had not even a halfpenny to buy a candle. Deceased 
then lay down on the straw, and said he could not live till 
morning. — A juror : 'You are dying of starvation yourself, 
and you ought to go into the house until the summer.' 
Witness : ' If we went in we should die. When we come 
out in the summer we should be like people dropped from 
the sky. No one would know us, and we would not have 
even a room. I could work now if I had food, for my sight 
would get better.' Dr. G. P. Walker said deceased died 
from syncope, from exhaustion, from want of food. The 
deceased had had no bed-clothes. For four months he had 
had nothing but bread to eat. There was not a particle of 
fat in the body. There was no disease, but if there had 
been medical attendance, he might have survived the syn- 
cope or fainting. The coroner having remarked upon the 
painful nature of the case, the jury returned the following 
verdict: 'That deceased died from exhaustion, from want of 
food and the common necessaries of life ; also through 
want of medical aid.' " 

37. "Why would witness not go into the workhouse?" 
you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a prejudice against 
the workhouse which the rich have not ; for, of course, every 

fitte, Tokay, and Champagne of the finest vintages were served most 
lavishly throughout the morning. After supper dancing was resumed 
with increased animation, and the ball terminated with a chaine dia- 
bolique and a cancan d'enfer at seven in the morning. (Morning- 
service — ' Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the opening eyelids of 
the Morn. — ') Here is the menu: — 'Consomme de volaille a la Bagra- 
tion; 16 hors-d'oeuvres varies. Bouchees a la Talleyrand. Saumons 
froids, sauce Ravigote. Filets de boeuf en Bellevue, timbales milanaises 
chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes truffees. Pates de foies gras, buissons 
d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, gelees blanches aux fruits, gateaux 
mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fromages glaces, Ananas. Dessert." 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 47 

one who takes a pension from Government goes into the 
workhouse on a grand scale ; * only the workhouses for the 
rich do not involve the idea of work, and should be called 
play-houses. But the poor like to die independently, it 
appears ; perhaps if we made the play-houses for them 
pretty and pleasant enough, or gave them their pensions at 
home, and allowed them a little introductory peculation with 
the public money, their minds might be reconciled to the 
conditions. Meantime, here are the facts : we make our 
relief either so insulting to them, or so painful, that they 
rather die than take it at our hands ; or, for third alterna- 
tive, we leave them so untaught and foolish that they starve 
like brute creatures, wild and dumb, not knowing what to 
do, or what to ask. I say, you despise compassion ; if you 
did not, such a newspaper paragraph would be as impossible 
in a Christian country as a deliberate assassination per- 
mitted in its public streets. 2 " Christian " did I say ? Alas, 

1 Please observe this statement, and think of it, and consider how 
it happens that a poor old woman will be ashamed to take a shilling 
a week from the country — but no one is ashamed to take a pension of 
a thousand a year. 

2 I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the Pall Mall Gazette 
established ; for the power of the press in the hands of highly-educated 
men, in independent position, and of honest purpose, may, indeed, 
become all that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor 
will, therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my 
respect for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its third 
number, page 5, which was wrong in every word of it, with the intense 
wrongness which only an honest man can achieve who has taken a false 
turn of thought in the outset, and is following it, regardless of conse- 
quences. It contained at the end this notable passage: — 

" The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction — aye, and the bed- 
steads and blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the law ought 
to give to outcasts merely as outcasts." I merely put beside this expres- 
sion of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1S65, a part of the message 
which Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice like a trumpet" in 



48 SESAME AND LILIES. 

if we were but wholesomely ^-Christian, it would be 
impossible ; it is our imaginary Christianity that helps us to 
commit these crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in our faith, 
for the lewd sensation of it ; dressing it up, like everything 
else, in fiction. The dramatic Christianity of the organ and 
aisle, of dawn-service and twilight-revival — the Christianity 
which we do not fear to mix the mockery of, pictorially, 
with our play about the devil, in our Satanellas, — Roberts, 
— Fausts ; chanting hymns through traceried windows for 
back-ground effect, and artistically modulating the " Dio " 
through variation on variation of mimicked prayer (while 
we distribute tracts, next day, for the benefit of uncultivated 
swearers, upon what we suppose to be the signification of 
the Third Commandment) ; — this gas-lighted, and gas- 
inspired, Christianity, we are triumphant in, and draw back 
the hem of our robes from the touch of the heretics who 
dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian righteous- 
ness in a plain English word or deed ; to make Christian 

declaring to the gentlemen of his day : " Ye fast for strife, and to 
smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast that I. have 
chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor 
that are cast out (margin ' afflicted ') to thy house." The falsehood on 
which the writer had mentally founded himself, as previously stated by 
him, was this : " To confound the functions of the dispensers of the 
poor-rates with those of the dispensers of a charitable institution is a 
great and pernicious error." This sentence is so accurately and 
exquisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed in our minds 
before we can deal with any existing problem of national distress. " To 
understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the 
nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of 
hand as much greater and franker than that possible to individual 
charity, as the collective national wisdom and power may be supposed 
greater than those of any single person, is the foundation of all law 
respecting pauperism." (Since this was written the Pall Mall Gazette 
has become a mere party paper — like the rest ; but it writes well, and 
does more good than mischief on the whole.) 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 49 

law any rule of lit?, and found one National act or hope 
thereon, — we know too well what our faith comes to for 
that ! You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke 
than true action or passion out of your modern English 
religion. You had better get rid of the smoke, and the 
organ-pipes, both ; leave them, and the Gothic windows, and 
the painted glass, to the property-man ; give up your car- 
buretted hydrogen ghost in one healthy expiration, and look 
after Lazarus at the door-step. For there is a true Church 
wherever one hand meets another helpfully, and that is 
the only holy or Mother Church which ever was, or ever 
shall be. 

38. All these pleasures, then, and all these virtues, I 
repeat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed, men 
among you who do not ; by whose work, by whose strength, 
by whose life, by whose death, you live, and never thank 
them. Your wealth, your amusement, your pride, would all 
be alike impossible, but for those whom you scorn or forget. 
The policeman, who is walking up and down the black lane 
all night to watch the guilt you have created there, and 
may have his brains beaten out, and be maimed for life, at 
any moment, and never be thanked ; the sailor wrestling 
with the sea's rage ; the quiet student poring over his book 
or his vial ; the common worker, without praise, and nearly 
without bread, fulfilling his task as your horses drag your 
carts, hopeless, and spurned of all ; these are the men by 
whom England lives ; but they are not the nation ; they are 
only the body and nervous force of it, acting still from old 
habit in a convulsive perseverance, while the mind is gone. 
Our National wish and purpose are to be amused ; our 
National religion is the performance of church ceremonies, 
and preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the 
mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves ; and the 
necessity for this amusement is fastening on us as a feverous 



5<3 SESAME AND LILIES. 

disease of parched throat and wandering eyes — senseless, 
dissolute, merciless. 1 

39. When men are rightly occupied, their amusement 
grows out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful 
flower ; — when they are faithfully helpful and compassion- 
ate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and 
vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse of the body. But 
now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine 
energy into the false business of money-making ; and hav- 
ing no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed 
up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with dolls, 
but guiltily and darkly, as the idolatrous Jews with their 
pictures on cavern walls, which men had to dig to detect. 
The justice we do not execute, we mimic in the novel and 
on the stage ; for the beauty we destroy in nature, we sub- 
stitute the metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human 
nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some 
kind) for the noble grief we should have borne with our 
fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept with them, 
we gloat over the pathos of the police court, and gather the 
night-dew of the grave. 

40. It is difficult to estimate the true significance of these 
things ; the facts are frightful enough ; — the measure of 
national fault involved in them is, perhaps, not as great as 
it would at first seem. We permit, or cause, thousands of 
deaths daily, but we mean no harm ; we set fire to houses, 
and ravage peasants' fields ; yet we should be sorry to find 
we had injured anybody. We are still kind at heart ; still 
capable of virtue, but only as children are. Chalmers, at 
the end of his long life, having had much power with the 
public, being plagued in some serious matter by a reference 

1 How literally that word Z?w-Ease ; the Negation and impossibility 
of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry and its 
Amusements. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 5 I 

to •• public opinion," uttered the impatient exclamation, 
" The public is just a great baby ! " And the reason that I 
have allowed all these graver subjects of thought to mix 
themselves up with an inquiry into methods of reading, 
is that, the more I see of our national faults and miseries, 
the more they resolve themselves into conditions of childish 
illiterateness, and want of education in the most ordinary 
habits of thought. It is, I repeat, not vice, not selfishness, 
not dullness of brain, which we have to lament ; but an 
unreachable schoolboy's recklessness, only differing from 
the true schoolboy's in its incapacity of being helped, 
because it acknowledges no master. 

41. There is a curious type of us given in one of the 
lovely, neglected works of the last of our great painters. It 
is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, and of its 
brook, and valley, and hills, and folded morning sky beyond. 
And unmindful alike of these, and of the dead who have 
left these for other valleys and for other skies, a group of 
schoolboys have piled their little books upon a grave, to 
strike them off with stones. So, also, we play with the 
words of the dead that would teach us, and strike them far 
from us with our bitter, reckless will ; little thinking that 
those leaves which the wind scatters had been piled, not 
only upon a gravestone, but upon the seal of an enchanted 
vault — nay, the gate of a great city of sleeping kings, who 
would awake for us, and walk with us, if we knew but how 
to call them by their names. How often, even if we lift the 
marble entrance gate, do we but wander among those old 
kings in their repose, and finger the robes they lie in, and 
stir the crowns on their foreheads ; and still they are silent 
to us, and seem but a dusty imagery ; because we know not 
the incantation of the heart that would wake them; — which, 
if they once heard, they would start up to meet us in their 
power of long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and consider 



52 SESAME AND LILIES. 

us; and, as the fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, 
saying, " Art thou also become weak as we — art thou also 
become one of us?" so would these kings, with their 
undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, "Art thou 
also become pure and mighty of heart as we ? art thou also 
become one of us ? " 

42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — " magnanimous " 
— to be this, is, indeed, to be great in life ; to become this 
increasingly, is, indeed, to "advance in life," — in life 
itself — not in the trappings of it. My friends, do you 
remember that old Scythian custom, when the head of a 
house died ? How he was dressed in his finest dress, and 
set in his chariot, and carried about to his friends' houses ; 
and each of them placed him at his table's head, and all 
feasted in his presence ? Suppose it were offered to you, in 
plain words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, that you 
should gain this Scythian honor, gradually, while you yet 
thought yourself alive. Suppose the offer were this : You 
shall die slowly ; your blood shall daily grow cold, your 
flesh petrify, your heart beat at last only as a rusted group 
of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you, and sink 
through the earth into the ice of Caina ; but, day by day, 
your body shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher 
chariots, and have more orders on its breast ■ — crowns on 
its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and 
shout round it, crowd after it up and down the streets ; 
build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' heads all 
the night long ; your soul shall stay enough within it to 
know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress 
on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown-edge on the 
skull ; — no more. Would you take the offer, verbally 
made by the death-angel ? Would the meanest among us 
take it, think you ? Yet practically and verily we grasp at 
it, every one of us, in a measure ; many of us grasp at it in 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 53 

its fullness of horror. Every man accepts it, who desires to 
advance in life without knowing what life is ; who means 
only that he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and 
more fortune, and more public honor, and — not more per- 
sonal soul. He only is advancing in life, whose heart is 
getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, 
whose spirit is entering into Living peace. And the men 
who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the 
earth — they, and they only. All other kingships, so far as 
they are true, are only the practical issue and expression of 
theirs; if less than this, they are either dramatic royalties, — 
costly shows, set off, indeed, with real jewels instead of 
tinsel, — but still only the toys of nations ; or else, they are 
no royalties at all, but tyrannies, or the mere active and 
practical issue of national folly ; for which reason I have 
said of them elsewhere, " Visible governments are the toys 
of some nations, the diseases of others, the harness of some, 
the burdens of more." 

43. But I have no words for the wonder with which I 
hear Kinghood still spoken of, even among thoughtful men, 
as if governed nations were a personal property, and might 
be bought and sold, or otherwise acquired, as sheep, of 
whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose fleece he was 
to gather ; as if Achilles' indignant epithet of base kings, 
"people-eating," were the constant and proper title of all 
monarchs; and enlargement of a king's dominion meant the 
same thing as the increase of a private man's estate ! 
Kings who think so, however powerful, can no more be the 
true kings of the nation than gad-flies are the kings of a 
horse ; they suck it, and may drive it wild, but do not guide 
it. They, and their courts, and their armies are, if one 
could see clearly, only a large species of marsh mosquito, 
with bayonet proboscis and melodious, band-mastered, trum- 
peting in the summer air ; the twilight being, perhaps, some- 



54 SESAME AND LILIES. 

times fairer, but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering 
mists of midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule 
quietly, if at all, and hate ruling ; too many of them make 
"il gran refiiito" 1 ; and if they do not, the mob, as soon as 
they are likely to become useful to it, is pretty sure to make 
its "gran rifiuto " of them. 

44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some 
day, if ever day comes when he will estimate his dominion 
by the force of it, — not the geographical boundaries. It 
matters very little whether Trent cuts you a cantel out here, 
or Rhine rounds you a castle less there. But it does matter 
to you, king of men, whether you can verily say to this man, 
"Go," and he goeth ; and to another, ''Come," and he 
cometh. Whether you can turn your people, as you can 
Trent — and where it is that you bid them .come, and where 
go. It matters to you, king of men, whether your people 
hate you, and die by you, or love you, and live by you. 
You may measure your dominion by multitudes better than 
by miles ; and count degrees of love latitude, not from, but 
to, a wonderfully warm and infinite equator. 

45. Measure ! nay, you cannot measure. Who shall 
measure the difference between the power of those who " do 
and teach," and who are greatest in the kingdoms of earth, 
as of heaven — and the power of those who undo, and con- 
sume — whose power, at the fullest, is only the power of the 
moth and the rust ? Strange ! to think how the Moth-kings 
lay up treasures for the moth ; and the Rust-kings, who are 
to their peoples' strength as rust to armor, lay up treasures 
for the rust; and the Robber-kings, treasures for the robber; 
but how few kings have ever laid up treasures that needed 
no guarding — treasures of which, the more thieves there 
were, the better ! Broidered robe, only to be rent ; helm 
and sword, only to be dimmed ; jewel and gold, only to be 

1 The great renunciation. 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 5 5 

scattered ; — there have been three kinds of kings who have 
gathered these. Suppose there ever should arise a Fourth 
order of kings, who had read, in some obscure writing of 
long ago, that there was a Fourth kind of treasure, which 
the jewel and gold could not equal, neither should it be 
valued with pure gold. A web made fair in the weaving, by 
Athena's shuttle ; an armor, forged in divine fire by Vul- 
canian force — a gold to be mined in the sun's red heart, 
where he sets over the Delphian cliffs ; — deep-pictured 
tissue, impenetrable armor, potable gold ! — the three great 
Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still calling to us, 
and waiting at the posts of our doors, to lead us, with their 
winged power, and guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the 
path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye 
has not seen ! Suppose kings should ever arise, who heard 
and believed this word, and at last gathered and brought 
forth treasures of — Wisdom — for their people ? 

46. Think what an amazing business that would be ! 
How inconceivable, in the state of our present national 
wisdom ! That we should bring up our peasants to a book 
exercise instead of a bayonet exercise! — organize, drill, 
maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies of thinkers, 
instead of armies of stabbers! — find national amusement in 
reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds ; give prizes for a 
fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a target. 
What an absurd idea it seems, put fairly in words, that the 
wealth of the capitalists of civilized nations should ever 
come to support literature instead of war! 

47. Have yet patience with me, while I read you a single 
sentence out of the only book, properly to be called a book, 
that I have yet written myself, the one that will stand (if 
anything stand) surest and longest of all work of mine. 

" It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in 
Europe that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports 



56 SESAME AND LILIES. 

unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to sup- 
port them ; for most of the men who wage such, wage them 
gratis ; but for an unjust war, men's bodies and souls have 
both to be bought ; and the best tools of war for them 
besides, which makes such war costly to the maximum ; not 
to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, 
between nations which have not grace nor honesty enough 
in all their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with ; 
as, at present, France and England, purchasing of each 
other ten millions' sterling worth of consternation, annually 
(a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, 
sown, reaped, and granaried by the ' science ' of the modern 
political economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). 
And, all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of 
the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are 
repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to 
have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the 
primary root of the war ; but its real root is the covetousness 
of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frank- 
ness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, 
his own separate loss and punishment to each person." 

48. France and England literally, observe, buy panic of 
each other ; they pay, each of them, for ten thousand 
thousand pounds' worth of terror, a year. Now suppose, 
instead of buying these ten millions' worth of panic annually, 
they made up their minds to be at peace with each other, 
and buy ten millions' worth of knowledge annually ; and 
that each nation spent its ten thousand thousand pounds a 
year in founding royal libraries, royal art galleries, royal 
museums, royal gardens, and places of rest. Might it not 
be better somewhat for both French and English ? 

49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. 
Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long before royal or 
national libraries will be founded in every considerable city, 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. . 57 

with a royal series of books in them ; the same series in 
every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, 
prepared for that national series in the most perfect way 
possible ; their text printed all on leaves of equal size, 
broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, light in 
the hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples 
of binders' work ; and that these great libraries will be 
accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of 
the day and evening ; strict law being enforced for this 
cleanliness and quietness. 

I could shape for you other plans, for art galleries, and for 
natural history galleries, and for many precious — many, it 
seems to me, needful- — things ; but this book plan is the 
easiest and needfullest, and would prove a considerable 
tonic to what we call our British constitution, which has 
fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil 
hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You have got its corn 
laws repealed for it ; try if you cannot get corn laws estab- 
lished for it, dealing in a better bread; — bread made of 
that old enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens 
doors ; — doors, not of robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries. 

50. Note to H 30.- — Respecting the increase of rent by 
the deaths of the poor, for evidence of which, see the preface 
to the Medical officer's report to the Privy Council, just 
published, there are suggestions in its preface which will 
make some stir among us, I fancy, respecting which let me 
note these points following : — 

There are two theories on the subject of land now abroad, 
and in contention ; both false. 

The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have always 
existed, and must continue to exist, a certain number of 
hereditarily sacred persons to whom the earth, air, and 
water of the world belong, as personal property ; of which 



58 SESAME AND LILIES. 

earth, air, and water, these persons may, at their pleasure, 
permit, or forbid, the rest of the human race to eat, breathe, 
or to drink. This theory is not for many years longer 
tenable. The adverse theory is that a division of the land 
of the world among the mob of the world would immediately 
elevate the said mob into sacred personages ; that houses 
would then build themselves, and corn grow of itself ; and 
that everybody would be able to live, without doing any 
work for his living. This theory would also be found highly 
untenable in practice. 

It will, however, require some rough experiments, and 
rougher catastrophes, before the generality of persons will 
be convinced that no law concerning anything, least of all 
concerning land, for either holding or dividing it, or renting 
it high, or renting it low — would be of the smallest ultimate 
use to the people — so long as the general contest for life, 
and for the means of life, remains one of mere brutal com- 
petition. That contest, in an unprincipled nation, will take 
one deadly form or another, whatever laws you make against 
it. For instance, it would be an entirely wholesome law for 
England, if it could be carried, that maximum limits should 
be assigned to incomes according to classes ; and that every 
nobleman's income should be paid to him as a fixed salary or 
pension by the nation; and not squeezed by him in variable 
sums, at discretion, out of the tenants of his land. But if 
you could get such a law passed to-morrow, and if, which 
would be farther necessary, you could fix the value of the 
assigned incomes by making a given weight of pure bread 
for a given sum, a twelve-month would not pass before 
another currency would have been tacitly established, and 
the power of accumulative wealth would have reasserted 
itself in some other article, or some other imaginary sign. 
There is only one cure for public distress — and that is 
public education, directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, 



OF KINGS TREASURIES. 59 

and just. There are, indeed, many laws conceivable which 
would gradually better and strengthen the national temper ; 
but, for the most part, they are such as the national temper 
must be much bettered before it would bear. A nation 
in its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child by 
backboards, but when it is old, it cannot that way straighten 
its crooked spine. 

And besides ; the problem of land, at its worst, is a by 
one ; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question 
remains inexorable, — Who is to dig it? Which of us, in 
brief words, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest — 
and for what pay ? Who is to do the pleasant and clean 
work, and for what pay ? Who is to do no work, and for 
what pay ? And there are curious moral and religious ques- 
tions connected with these. How far is it lawful to suck a 
portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in order to 
put the abstracted psychical quantities together and make 
one very beautiful or ideal soul ? If we had to deal with 
mere blood, instead of spirit (and the thing might literally 
be done — as it has been done with infants before now)- — 
so that it were possible by taking a certain quantity of blood 
from the arms of a given number of the mob, and putting it 
all into one person, to make a more azure-blooded gentle- 
man of him," the thing would of course be managed ; but 
secretly, I should conceive. But now, because it is brain 
and soul that we abstract, not visible blood, it can be done 
quite openly, and we live, we gentlemen, on delicatest prey, 
after the manner of weasels ; that is to say, we keep a 
certain number of clowns digging and ditching, and gener- 
ally stupefied, in order that we, being fed gratis, may have 
all the thinking and feeling to ourselves. Yet there is a 
great deal to be said for this. A highly-bred and trained 
English, French, Austrian, or Italian gentleman (much more 
a lady) is a great production, — a better production than 



60 SESAME AND LILIES. 

most statues ; being beautifully colored as well as shaped, 
and plus all the brains .; a glorious thing to look at, a 
wonderful thing to talk to ; and you cannot have it, any 
more than a pyramid or a church, but by sacrifice of much 
contributed life. And it is, perhaps, better to build a 
beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome or steeple 
— and more delightful to look up reverently to a creature 
far above us, than to a wall ; only the beautiful human 
creature will have some duties to do in return — duties of 
living belfry and rampart — of which presently. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

1 . Sesame : originally, a plant yielding an oily grain used by 
Eastern nations for food. The reference here is to its use as a 
talismanic word : the cave of the forty thieves in a tale of the 
" Arabian Nights " is opened and closed by the magic words, 
"Open, Sesame!" — "Shut Sesame!" Mr. Ruskin uses it to 
denote the key by which the treasuries of book-lore may be 
unlocked. 

2. Double-belled doors: many houses of the rich in London 
have two bells ; one for visitors, the other for those who call on 
business. 

3. The last infirmity of noble minds : these words are borrowed 
from Milton's " Lycidas v ' : — 

" Fame, the spur which the clear spirit doth raise 
(That last infirmity of noble minds) 
To scorn delights and live laborious days." 

4. My Lord: three archbishops of the Established Church of 
England, together with twenty-seven bishops, constitute the 
" Lords Spiritual " of the Upper House in Parliament ; and are, 
consequently, addressed as " My Lord." 

1 1 . Entree (Ang-tra/) : entrance, admission. 



ANNOTATIONS. 6l 

12. Elys'ian gates: the gates of Elysium, the name used by 
the Greeks to describe the home of the blessed dead; those 
whose good deeds while in life had exceeded the sum of their evil 
deeds. 

Portieres (Por-ti-air') : door-screens ; here, doors or gates to the 
houses of the great. 

Faubourg St. Germain (Fo-boor San Zhar-mang") : a portion of 
Paris in which the nobility formerly resided. 

15. Canaille (Can-a'yuh) : the rabble. 

Noblesse: Fr. nobility. By "the national noblesse of words" 
Ruskin means those words which, in any country, are pure in their 
origin ; i.e., are neither derived from nor compounded with words 
belonging to another language. 

16. Chameleon-cloaks, — groundlion cloaks : the chameleon, or 
ground-lion, is a kind of lizard whose color is said to change so as 
to harmonize with the color of its surroundings. 

18. Eccles'ia : from this Greek word, which originally meant 
any public meeting, has been derived the English word ecclesi- 
astical, which is limited to affairs of the Church. 

Presbyter : originally, simply an elder. 

19. Max Miiller (Mil'ler) : a distinguished German scholar, 
formerly professor of modern languages at Oxford. The lectures 
referred to are those on " The Science of Language." 

20. The pilot of the Galilea7i lake: St. Peter. — See Matt. iv. 
18-22. 

Two 7uassy keys he bore of metals twain: See Matt. xvi. 18, 
19. The idea that the keys are of iron and gold is Milton's own. 
The iron symbolizes harsh punishment ; the gold symbolizes love, 
the key to heavenly joy. 

Mitred locks : a figurative expression which, expanded, means 
his head upon which is worn a mitre or tall bishop' 's cap, symbol 
of authority in the Church. 

Enow (Old Eng.) : enough. 

Worthy bidden guest: See Matt. xxii. 3, 8, 9. 

Recks (Old Eng.) : cares. This is an old idiom, meaning, 
What care is it to them ? 

Sped : provided for. 



62 SESAME AND LILIES. 

List (Old Eng.) : please, choose. 

Scrannel pipes of wretched straw : the word scrannel is 
thought to have been invented by Milton, and may mean either 
thin or screeching. The entire phrase forcibly characterizes the 
worthlessness of these false bishops' teaching. 

Rank mist: unwholesome and corrupting doctrines. 

Episcopal function : the duty belonging to the office of bishop. 

22. The word office as it occurs in this section is used in its 
original Latin sense ; viz., duty. 

Salisbury steeple : the highest spire in England ; 404 feet high. 

23. Cret'inous: idiotic ;■ — so-called from cretin, a Swiss name 
for a deformed and helpless idiot. 

24. The rock-apostle : Peter, — literally, a rock. See Matt.xvi.18. 

25. Cranmer: an English statesman, divine, and reformer, 
made archbishop of Canterbury and prime minister by Henry 
VIII. Under Queen Mary, he was burned at the stake (1556) 
on a charge of heresy. 

St. Francis: founder of the Franciscan order of mendicant 
friars, about 1210 a.d. 

St. Dominic : founder of the order of Dominicans, or Preach- 
ing Friars, 121 5 a.d. 

Him who made Virgil wonder to gaze upofi him : Caiaphas — 
(see John xi. 49, 50). Dante (Inferno xxiii. 3) represents him 
as punished by being crucified and transfixed to the ground by 
three stakes driven through his body. 

" JJisteso, tanto vilmente, nelV eterno esilio " : " distended so 
ignominiously in the eternal exile." • — Inferno xxiii. 126. 

Him whom Dante stood beside : Nicholas III, whom Dante 
represents as punished for fraud by being buried head downward 
with his feet protruding from the earth. 

" Co?ne '/ frate che confessa lo perfido assassin": "like the 
friar who is hearing the confession of a treacherous assassin." — 
Inferno xix. 49. 

Alighieri (Al-e-ge-a'-ree) : Dante's family-name. 

28. Mimosa: a species of leguminous plants. The one here 
referred to is the sensitive plant, so called because the leaves 
shrink and fold when touched. 



\N NOTATIONS. 6$ 

2<j. Junketings : private feastings. 

Puppet-shows : mock dramas performed by little images moved 
by wires. 

30. Othello : the Moor of Venice in Shakespeare's play of the 
same name. 

32. Biblio-maniac : one who is insane on the subject of books. 

34. Ludgate apprentices : the apprentices of the Ludgate Hill 
District in London cried '-What d'ye lack?" when advertising 
their masters' wares on the street. 

35. Schaffhausen : capital of a Swiss canton of the same name. 
Three miles below the town are the beautiful falls of the Rhine, 
of which Ruskin has given an eloquent description in "Modern 
Painters.'' 

Lucerne : a Swiss lake on whose shores the patriotic deeds of 
Tell are said to have taken place. 

Tell's Chapel: a chapel dedicated to the virtues of William 
Tell, a legendary hero of Switzerland. 

Chamouni (Sha-mou-nee') : a picturesque Alpine valley of 
France, 2000 feet above Lake Geneva. Its sublime beauty has 
inspired some noble poems, one of the finest being that by 
Coleridge. 

Zurich (Zoo'rik) : a lake and canton of Switzerland. 

36. Spit'alfields : a section of London, seat of an important 
silk manufacture. 

Translator: literally, one who carries across; i.e., one who 
changes something into another form. In this case, one who 
makes new boots of old ones. 

37. Satanellas, — Roberts, — Fausts : titles of dramas in 
which the Devil is introduced as one of the characters. 

Dio (De'-o) : Italian w r ord for God. 
Lazarus : see Luke xvi. 20. 

40. Chalmers : the most eminent Scottish divine of the present 
century. 

41. Kirkby Lonsdale : a market town of England, County of 
Westmoreland. Its location is picturesque. 

Ha'des : the name given by the Greeks to the kingdom of Pluto, 
or the realm of the dead. 



64 SESAME AND LILIES. 

42. Scythian : pertaining to Scythia, a name given in ancient 
times to the country north and east of the Black Sea, the Caspian, 
and the Sea of Aral. 

Living peace : see Romans vi. 8. 
Harness : here, armor or defense. 

43. Achilles (A-kil'les): the hero of Homer's " Iliad." 
Can'tel : a piece shaped like a half-moon. 

45. Athen'a: the Greek goddess of wisdom and of arts. Her 
Roman name is Minerva. 

Vulcanian : pertaining to Vulcan, the Greek god of fire and 
the forge, who presided over the working of metals : the word is 
also used to signify volcanic force. 

Delphian : pertaining to Delphi in Greece, the seat of a 
renowned oracle of Apollo, the sun-god. 

Deep pictured tissue : a fabric so interwoven with gold and 
colors as to form pictures. 

Potable : drinkable. 

47. Taxation : about seventy-five cents out of every dollar of 
taxes levied in England is spent either in paying the interest on 
old war debts, or in making preparation for future wars. 

48. Panic : extreme fright affecting a number of persons at 
once : so named because, according to Herodotus, the Greek god 
Pan struck such a sudden terror into the Persians at the battle of 
Marathon. 

49. Corn-laws : laws that imposed a heavy duty on all grain 
(corn) imported into England, thus making bread dear, and caus- 
ing great distress among the laboring classes. These laws were 
repealed in 1849. 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

In this lecture, which is a further exposition of the 
thought of "Kings' Treasuries," Mr. Ruskin gives with 
great force his views concerning the education and duties 
of woman. 

The purpose of education is the same for both men and 
women, viz., the acquiring of power which shall be used in 
blessing and redeeming society; in converting the desert 
places of human life into gardens of fragrant beauty. For 
the only true kingship and queenship is that "which consists 
in a stronger moral state and a truer thoughtful state, than 
that of others." 

Since education, then, fits for duty, it is important to 
consider what are the duties of woman. It is Mr. Ruskin's 
opinion that to speak of the mission and the rights of 
woman is to assume that the nature and the interests of 
men and women are antagonistic. Not less erroneous is 
the idea that woman is inferior to man, and therefore to 
yield him servile obedience. 

The intention in all life is harmony. To produce this 
harmony in human life, the right understanding and accept- 
ance of the relations of the womanly and the manly mind, 
and their duty each to each are essentia]. 

Since to use books rightly is "to be led by them into 
wider sight " when our own knowledge is insufficient, 
Ruskin seeks to discover the opinion of "the wisest, the 



66 SESAME AND LILIES. 

purest-hearted of all ages" concerning the "true dignity of 
woman and her mode of help to man." Shakespeare, that 
master-interpreter of man to himself, represents women as 
" infallibly faithful and wise counselors," — distinguished by 
heroic action and fortitude — "strong to sanctify even when 
they cannot save." Walter Scott, who "has given the 
broadest view of modern society," pictures woman as com- 
bining intellectual strength with feminine grace and tender- 
ness, as moved by a high sense of justice ; as actuated by 
fearless, self-sacrificing devotion to duty ; as animated by 
such wisdom and self-controlled affection as exalts not only 
her own character, but that of her lover. This exalted 
portraiture of womanly dignity and virtue and power finds 
its counterpart in the great poems of all ages. But this 
view of the character and power of woman is contrary to 
the commonly accepted idea of the marriage relation which 
assumes that the woman is inferior, and, therefore, properly 
subject to her husband. 

The appeal is next made to the human heart. In chivalry, 
the embodiment of the Christian ideal, the knight voluntarily 
submits to be directed by the lady of his choice, whose com- 
mands, dictated by love and wise foresight, he feels himself 
honored in obeying. Mr. Ruskin deprecates the fact that, 
among us, marriage so often puts an end to this knightly, 
reverent devotion. The noble picture which he paints of 
harmonious family life, — the home that is the " place of 
Peace" — had been daily realized for him from his earliest 
recollection. The "guiding, determining function," which 
he assigns to woman, was that of his mother, whose serene, 
self-centred dignity made her home a sacred shrine of order 
and holy peace. 

Happy all who can give such testimony to a harmonious 
home-life as this of Ruskin's : — "I had never heard my 
father's or mother's voice once raised in any question with 



INTRODUCTORY. 6? 

each other ; nor seen an angry, or even slightly hurt or 
offended glance, in the eye of either. I had never heard -a. 
servant scolded ; nor even suddenly, passionately, or in any 
severe manner blamed. I had never seen a moment's 
trouble or disorder in any household matter ; nor anything 
whatever either done in a hurry, or undone (not done) in 
clue time." 

'■Woman's true place and honor, then, is to be the guide, the 
counselor, the director of man.' But to be capable of this 
guidance, she must be good, wise, and always ready to serve. 

The lecture considers, in the second place, what kind of 
education will fit the girl for this high dignity of gracious 
womanhood. 

First, that perfection of womanly beauty may be attained, 
she must have such physical training as will secure harmoni- 
ous bodily development. Second, she should be trained in 
habits of accurate thinking ; she should become acquainted 
with the beauty and the laws of nature ; humility should be 
bred as the result of such a view of the vast expanse of 
desirable knowledge as to cause her to feel how limited is 
hers by comparison ; her imagination should be so cultivated 
as to develop such an active sympathy with human suffering, 
as will express itself in helpful deeds. 

Theology, as mere intellectual speculation, Mr. Ruskin 
would have women avoid ; but the higher science of prac- 
tical religion they should realize in every-day life. 

All superficial study is weakening ; but while the course 
pursued should, in Mr. Ruskin's opinion, be the same for 
girls as for boys, he would have the former apply their 
knowledge in the daily home life and in social service. 

" Let a girl's education be as serious as a boy's." Fri- 
volity in women is the logical result of false, superficial 
education. The virtues which we call manly should also 
be developed to be the strength of woman. 



68 SESAME AND LILIES. 

A well-chosen course of reading in history, poetry, and 
fiction, together with the influence of the best models in art, 
will give true standards of elevated thought and life. Above 
all, see that her teachers have a personality fitted to inspire 
reverence and that such respect shall be aroused by parental 
example. Lastly, the quiet, loving companionship of nature, 
with her mystical influences, upon the sensitive soul of the 
child, is a powerful agency in the development of the finer 
qualities. 

Mr. Ruskin concludes this portion of his lecture with a 
protest against the mercenary spirit of the age, which has 
led to the defacing of the natural beauty of England by 
digging in mines, building manufactories, and constructing 
lines of railroads. The Greek imagination peopled Par- 
nassus with the Muses, but the equally beautiful Mount 
Snowdon awakens in the minds of Englishmen no thrill 
of reverent awe ; the national mind is insensible to the 
holy beauty of nature. 

Mr. Ruskin believes that the true expansion of woman's 
duty, equally with that of man, leads to service to the state. 
Among the inextinguishable instincts deeply implanted in 
the soul of man is the love of power, "which, rightly 
directed, maintains all the majesty and law of life." 

What shall be the purpose and scope of this power? To 
redeem, not to destroy, — the sweetening and purifying of 
human lives. 

The noble title of Lady is not to be assumed for the sake 
of selfish distinction, but to represent the true "loaf-giver" 
who ministers to all the wants of the Master's little ones, — • 
his representatives on earth. Then shall women become 
truly queens whose reign is one of duty, whose ambition is 
to bless with kindly helpfulness. 

Mr. Ruskin charges upon woman's indifference the re- 
sponsibility of much of the warfare, the injustice, and the 



of queens' gardens. 69 

misery in the world. With eloquent force, he appeals to 
the educated women of England to renounce self-indulgent 
ease and pleasure, and to devote themselves to nourishing 
into healthy, happy life the feeble child-flowers who are 
struggling with the sharp blasts of poverty and injustice. 
Then they shall, indeed, walk as queens in the gardens 
made beautiful with the lilies of joyous lives tended by 
their care. 



LECTURE II. — LILIES. 1 

OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 

" Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert ; let the desert be made cheerful, 
and bloom as the lily ; and the barren places of Jordan shall run wild 
with wood.'' — Isaiah xxxv, r. (Septuagint.) 

51. It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the sequel 
of one previously given, that I should shortly state to you 
my general intention in both. The questions specially pro- 
posed to you in the first, namely, How and What to Read, 
rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my endeavor to 
make you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, Why to 
Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever advan- 
tages we possess in the present day in the diffusion of 
education and of literature, can only be rightly used by 
any of us when we have apprehended clearly what educa- 
tion is to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish you to 
see that both well-directed moral training and well-chosen 
reading lead to the possession of a power over the ill-guided 
and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in 
the truest sense, kingly; conferring indeed the purest king- 

1 This lecture was given December 14, 1864, at the Town Hall, Man- 
chester, in aid of the St. Andrews' Schools. 



JO SESAME AND LILIES. 

ship that can exist among men : too many other kingships 
(however distinguished by visible insignia or material power) 
being either spectral, or tyrannous; — Spectral — that is to 
say, aspects and shows only of royalty, hollow as death, and 
which only the "Likeness of a kingly crown have on : ' ; or 
else tyrannous — -that is to say, substituting their own will 
for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule. 

52. There is, then, I repeat — and as I want to leave this 
idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it — only 
one pure kind of kingship ; an inevitable and external kind, 
crowned or not : the kingship, namely, which consists in a 
stronger moral state, and a truer thoughtful state, than that 
of others ; enabling you, therefore, to guide, or to raise 
them. Observe that word " State " ; we have got into a 
loose way of using it. It means literally the standing and 
stability of a thing ; and you have the full force of it in the 
derived word " statue " — " the immovable thing." A king's 
majesty or "state," then, and the right of his kingdom to be 
called a state, depends on the movelessness of both : — 
without tremor, without quiver of balance ; established and 
enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which nothing 
can alter, nor overthrow. 

53. Believing that all literature and all education are only 
useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, 
and therefore kingly, power — first, over ourselves, and, 
through ourselves, over all around us, I am now going to 
ask you to consider with me farther, what special portion or 
kind of this royal authority, arising out of noble education, 
may rightly be possessed by women ; and how far they also 
are called to a true queenly power. Not in their house- 
holds merely, but over all within their sphere. And in what 
sense, if they rightly understood and exercised this royal 
or gracious influence, the order and beauty induced by 
such benignant power would justify us in speaking of the 



OF QUEENS GARDENS. 7 1 

territories over which each of them reigned, as " Queens' 
Gardens." 

54. And here, in the very outset, we are met by a far 
deeper question, which — strange though this may seem — 
remains among many of us yet quite undecided, in spite of 
its infinite importance. 

We cannot determine what the queenly power of women 
should be, until we are agreed what their ordinary power 
should be. We cannot consider how education may fit 
them for any widely extending duty, until we are agreed 
what is their true constant duty. And there never was a 
time when wilder words were spoken, or more vain imagina- 
tion permitted, respecting this question — quite vital to all 
social happiness. The relations of the womanly to the 
manly nature, their different capacities of intellect or of 
virtue, seem never to have been yet estimated with entire 
consent. We hear of the " mission " and of the "rights " of 
Woman, as if these could ever be separate from the mission 
and the rights of Man; — as if she and her lord were 
creatures of independent kind, and of irreconcilable claim. 
This, at least, is wrong. And not less wrong ■ — perhaps 
even more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus far 
what I hope to prove) — is the idea that woman is only 
the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a 
thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether 
in her weakness, by the preeminence of his fortitude. 

This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her 
who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could 
be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave ! 

55. I. — Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some 
clear and harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if it is true) 
of what womanly mind and virtue are in power and office, with 
respect to man's ; and how their relations rightly accepted, 
aid, and increase, the vigor, and honor, and authority of both. 



72 SESAME AND LILIES. 

And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last 
lecture : namely, that the first use of education was to 
enable us to consult with the wisest and the greatest men 
on all points of earnest difficulty. That to use books 
rightly, was to go to them for help : to appeal to them, 
when our own knowledge and power of thought failed : to 
be led by them into wider sight — purer conception — than 
our own, and receive from them the united sentence of the 
judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and 
unstable opinion. 

Let us do this now. Let us see whether the greatest, the 
wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in any wise 
on this point: let us hear the testimony they have left 
respecting what they held to be the true dignity of woman, 
and her mode of help to man. 

56. And first let us take Shakespeare. 

Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no heroes ; 
— he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic 
figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of Henry the 
Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage : and the 
still slighter Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
In his labored and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello 
would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so 
great as to leave him the prey of every base practice round 
him ; but he is the only example even approximating to the 
heroic type. Coriolanus — Caesar — Antony, stand in flawed 
strength, and fall by their vanities ; — Hamlet is . indolent, 
and drowsily speculative ; Romeo an impatient boy ; the 
Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse fort- 
une ; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but 
too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical 
time, and he sinks into the office of a servant only. Or- 
lando, no less noble, is yet the despairing toy of chance, 
followed, comforted, saved, by Rosalind. Whereas there is 



OF QUEENS GARDENS. 73 

hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast 
in grave hope and errorless purpose : Cordelia, Desdemona, 
Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Katherine, Perdita, 
Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps love- 
liest, Virgilia, are all faultless : conceived in the highest 
heroic type of humanity. 

57. Then observe, secondly, 

The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the 
folly or fault of a man ; the redemption, if there be any, is 
by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and failing that, 
there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing to 
his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his mis- 
understanding of his children ; the virtue of his one true 
daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the 
others, unless he had cast her away from him ; as it is, she 
all but saves him. 

Of Othello I need not trace the tale ; — nor the one 
weakness of his so mighty love ; nor the inferiority of his 
perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman char- 
acter in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony 
against his error : — " Oh, murderous coxcomb ! What 
should such a fool Do with so good a wife ? " 

In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and brave stratagem of the 
wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless impatience 
of her husband. In Winter's Tale and in Cymbeline, the 
happiness and existence of two princely households, lost 
through long years, and imperiled to the death by the folly 
and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last by the 
queenly patience and wisdom of the wives. In Measure 
for Measure, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul 
cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the victorious 
truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, 
the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved 
her son from all evil ; his momentary forgetfulness of it 



74 SESAME AND LILIES. 

is his ruin; her prayer at last granted, saves him — not, 
indeed, from death, but from the curse of living as the 
destroyer of his country. 

And what shall I say of Julia, constant against the fickle- 
ness of a lover who is a mere wicked child ? — of Helena, 
against the petulance and insult of a careless youth? — of 
the patience of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the calmly 
devoted wisdom of the " unlessoned girl," who appears 
among the helplessness, the blindness, and the vindictive 
passions of men, as a gentle angel, bringing courage and 
safety by her presence, and defeating the worst malignities 
of crime by what women are fancied most to fail in, — 
precision and accuracy of thought. 

58. Observe, further, among all the principal figures in 
Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak woman — 
Ophelia ; and it is because she fails Hamlet at the critical 
moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature be, a guide to 
him when he needs her most, that all the bitter catastrophe 
follows. Finally, though there are three wicked women 
among the principal figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, and 
GonerH, they are felt at once to be frightful exceptions to 
the ordinary laws of life ; fatal in their influence also in pro- 
portion to the power for good which they have abandoned. 

Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony to the 
position and character of women in human life. He repre- 
sents them as infallibly faithful and wise counselors, — 
incorruptibly just and pure examples — strong always to 
sanctify, even when they cannot save. 

59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of the 
nature of man, — still less in his understanding of the 
causes and courses of fate, — but only as the writer who has 
given us the broadest view of the conditions and modes of 
ordinary thought in modern society, I ask you next to 
receive the witness of Walter Scott. 



OF QUEENS GARDENS. 75 

I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of no 
value ; and though the early romantic poetry is very beauti- 
ful, its testimony is of no weight, other than that of a boy's 
ideal. But his true works, studied from Scottish life, bear 
a true witness ; and, in the whole range of these, there are 
but three men who reach the heroic type 1 — Dandie Din- 
mont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse ; of these, one is a border 
farmer ; another a freebooter ; the third a soldier in a bad 
cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism only in their 
courage and faith, together with a strong, but uncultivated, 
or mistakenly applied, intellectual power ; while his younger 
men are the gentlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, and 
only by aid (or accident) of that fortune, survive, not 
vanquish, the trials they involuntarily sustain. Of any 
disciplined, or consistent character, earnest in a purpose 
wisely conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, 
definitely challenged, and resolutely subdued, there is no 
trace in his conceptions of young men. Whereas in his 
imaginations of women, — in the characters of Ellen Douglas, 
of Flora Mac Ivor, Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, 
Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice 
Lee, and Jeanie Deans, — with endless varieties of grace, 
tenderness, and intellectual power we find in all a quite 
infallible and inevitable sense of dignity and justice ; a 
fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifice to even the 
appearance of duty, much more to its real claims ; and, 

1 I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have 
noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great 
characters of men in the Waverley novels — the selfishness and narrow- 
ness of thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in 
Edward Glendinning, and the like ; and I ought to have noticed that 
there are several quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the 
backgrounds; three — let us accept joyously this courtesy to England 
and her soldiers — are English officers: Colonel Gardiner, Colonel 
Talbot, and Colonel Mannering. 



j6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

finally, a patient wisdom of deeply restrained affection, 
which does infinitely more than protect its objects from a 
momentary error ; it gradually forms, animates, and exalts 
the characters of the unworthy lovers, until, at the close of 
the tale, we are just able, and no more, to take patience in 
hearing of their unmerited success. 

So that, in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, it 
is the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides the 
youth ; it is never, by any chance, the youth who watches 
over, or educates his mistress. 

60. Next, take, though more briefly, graver testimony — 
that of the great Italians and Greeks. You know well the 
plan of Dante's great poem — that it is a love poem to his 
dead lady ; a song of praise for her watch over his soul. 
Stooping only to pity, never to love, she yet saves him from 
destruction — saves him from hell. He is going eternally 
astray in despair ; she comes down from heaven to his help, 
and throughout the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, inter- 
preting for him the most difficult truths, divine and human, 
and leading him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star. 

I do not insist upon Dante's conception ; if I began I 
could not cease ; besides, you might think this a wild 
imagination of one poet's heart. So I will rather read to 
you a few verses of the deliberate writing of a knight of 
Pisa to his living lady, wholly characteristic of the feeling 
of all the noblest men of the thirteenth, or early fourteenth 
century, preserved among many other such records of 
knightly honor and love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered 
for us from among the early Italian poets. 

" For lo ! thy law is passed 
That this my love should manifestly be 

To serve and honor thee ; 
And so I do ; and my delight is full, 
Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 



OF QUEEN'S HARDENS. J J 

" Without almost, I am all rapturous, 
Since thus my will was set 
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence ; 
Nor ever seems it anything could rouse 
A pain or regret, 
But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense ; 
Considering that from thee all virtues spread 

As from a fountain head, — 
That in thy gift is wisdom 's best avail, 

And honor without fail ; 
With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, 
Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 

" Lady, since I conceived 
That pleasurable aspect in my heart, 

My life has been apart 
I?i shining brightness and the place of truth; 

Which till that time, good sooth, 
Groped among shadows in a darken'd place, 

Where many hours and days 
It hardly ever had remember'd good. 

But now my servitude 
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 

• A man from a wild beast 
Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived. " 

61. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight would have 
had a lower estimate of women than this Christian lover. 
His spiritual subjection to them was, indeed, not so abso- 
lute ; but as regards their own personal character, it was 
only because you could not have followed me so easily, that 
I did not take the Greek women instead of Shakespeare's ; 
and instance, for chief ideal types of human beauty and 
faith, the simple mother's and wife's heart of Andromache ; 
the divine, yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra ; the playful 
kindness and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa ; the 
housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch upon 



y8 SESAME AND LILIES. 

the sea ; the ever patient, fearless, hopelessly devoted piety 
of the sister and daughter, in Antigone ; the bowing down 
of Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent ; and, finally, the expecta- 
tion of the resurrection, made clear to the soul of the 
Greeks in the return from her grave of that Alcestis, who, 
to save her husband, had passed calmly through the bitter- 
ness of death. 

62. Now, I could multiply witness upon witness of this 
kind upon you if I had time. I would take Chaucer, and 
show you why he wrote a Legend of Good Women ; but no 
Legend of Good Men. I would take Spenser, and show 
you how all his fairy knights are sometimes deceived and 
sometimes vanquished ; but the soul of Una is never dark- 
ened, and the spear of Britomart is never broken. Nay, I 
could go back into the mythical teaching of the most ancient 
times, and show you how the great people,- — by one of 
whose princesses it was appointed that the Lawgiver of all 
the earth should be educated, rather than by his own 
kindred ; — how that great Egyptian people, wisest then of 
nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a 
woman ; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver's 
shuttle ; and how the name and the form of that spirit, 
adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, became that 
Athena of the olive-helm, and cloudy shield, to faith in 
whom you owe, clown to this date, whatever you hold most 
precious in art, in literature, or in types of national virtue. 

63. But I will not wander into this distant and mythical 
element ; I will only ask you to give its legitimate value to 
the testimony of these great poets and men of the world, — 
consistent, as you see it is, on this head. I will ask you 
whether it can be supposed that these men, in the main 
work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious 
and idle view of the relations between man and woman ; — 
nay, worse than fictitious or idle ; for a thing may be 



OF QUEENS GARDENS. 79 

imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible ; but this, their 
ideal of woman, is, according to our common idea of the 
marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, 
is not to guide, nor even to think for herself. The man is 
always to be the wiser ; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, 
the superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power. 

64. Is it not somewhat important to make up our minds 
on this matter ? Are all these great men mistaken, or are 
we? Are Shakespeare and Aeschylus, Dante and Homer, 
merely dressing dolls for us ; or, worse than dolls, unnat- 
ural visions, the realization of which, were it possible, 
would bring anarchy into all households and ruin into all 
affections ? Nay, if you could suppose this, take lastly the 
evidence of facts, given by the human heart itself. In all 
Christian ages which have been remarkable for their purity 
or progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient 
devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient; — 
not merely enthusiastic and worshiping in imagination, 
but entirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman, 
however young, not only the encouragement, the praise, 
and the reward of all toil, but so far as any choice is open, 
or any question difficult of decision, the direction of all toil. 
That chivalry, to the abuse and dishonor of which are 
attributable primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in 
peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic relations ; and to 
the original purity and power of which we owe the defense 
alike of faith, of law, and of love ; — that chivalry, I say, in 
its very first conception of honorable life, assumes the sub- 
jection of the young knight to the command — should it 
even be the command in caprice — of his lady. It assumes 
this, because its masters knew that the first and necessary 
impulse of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of 
blind service to its lady ; that where that true faith and 
captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passions must be ; 



80 SESAME AND LILIES. 

and that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of 
his youth, is the sanctification of all man's strength, and 
the continuance of all his purposes. And this, not because 
such obedience would be safe, or honorable, were it ever 
rendered to the unworthy ; but because it ought to be 
impossible for every noble youth — it is impossible for 
every one rightly trained — to love any one whose gentle 
counsel he cannot trust, or whose prayerful command he 
can hesitate to obey. 

65. I do not insist by any farther argument on this, for I 
think it should commend itself at once to your knowledge of 
what has been and to your feelings of what should be. You 
cannot think that the buckling on of the knight's armor by 
his lady's hand Avas a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It 
is the type of an eternal truth — that the soul's armor is 
never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has 
braced it ; and it is only when she braces it loosely that 
the honor of manhood fails. Know you not those lovely 
lines — I would they were learned by all youthful ladies of 
England : — 

" Ah, wasteful woman ! — she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price, 
Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 
How has she cheapen'd Paradise ! 
How given for nought her priceless gift, 
How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine, 
Which, spent with due, respective thrift, 
Had made brutes men, and men divine ! " 1 

66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations of lovers I 
believe you will accept. But what we too often doubt is the 

1 Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or too care- 
fully; as far as I know he is the only living poet who always strengthens 
and purifies ; the others sometimes darken, and nearly always depress 
and discourage, the imagination they deeply seize. 



of queens' gardens. Si 

fitness of the continuance of such a relation throughout the 
whole of human life. We think it right in the lover and 
mistress, not in the husband and wife. That is to say, we 
think that a reverent and tender duty is due to one whose 
affection we still doubt, and whose character we as yet do 
but partially and distantly discern ; and that this reverence 
and duty are to be withdrawn, when the affection has 
become wholly and limitlessly our own, and the character 
has been so sifted and tried that we fear not to entrust 
it with the happiness of our lives. Do you not see how 
ignoble this is, as well as how unreasonable ? Do you not 
feel that marriage, ■ — when it is marriage at all, — is only 
the seal which marks the vowed transition of temporary into 
untiring service, and of fitful into eternal love ? 

67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding 
function of the woman reconcilable with a true wifely sub- 
jection ? Simply in that it is a guiding, not a determining, 
function. Let me try to show you briefly how these powers 
seem to be rightly distinguishable. 

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking 
of the "superiority" of one sex to the other, as if they could 
be compared in similar things. Each has what the other 
has not : each completes the other, and is completed by the 
other : they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and 
perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving 
from the other what the other only can give. 

68. Now their separate characters are briefly these. The 
man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is emi- 
nently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. 
His intellect is for speculation and invention ; his energy 
for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is 
just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's power 
is for rule, not for battle, — and her intellect is not for 
invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, 



$2 SESAME AND LILIES. 

and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, 
and their places. Her great function is Praise : she enters 
into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. 
By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger 
and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open 
world, must encounter all peril and trial : to him, there- 
fore, must be the failure, the offense, the inevitable error : 
often he must be wounded, or subdued ; often misled ; and 
always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this ; 
within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has 
sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause 
of error or offense. This is the true nature of home — it is 
the place of Peace ; the shelter, not only from all injury, 
but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is 
not this, it is not home : so far as the anxieties of the outer 
life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, un- 
known, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is 
allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, 
it ceases to be home ; it is then only a part of that outer 
world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But 
so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of 
the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose 
faces none may come but those whom they can receive with 
love, — so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only 
of a nobler shade and light, — shade as of the rock in a 
weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea, — 
so far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, of home. 
And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always 
round her. The stars only may be over her head ; the 
glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at 
her foot : but home is yet wherever she is ; and for a noble 
woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with 
cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, 
for those who else were homeless. 



of queens' gardens. 83 

69. This, then, I believe to be, — will you not admit it to 
be, — the woman's true place and power? But do not you 
see that to fulfill this, she must — as far as one can use such 
terms of a human creature — be incapable of error? So far 
as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must be 
enduringly, incorruptibly good ; instinctively, infallibly wise 
— wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation : 
wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but 
that she may never fail from his side : wise, not with the 
narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the 
passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because in- 
finitely applicable, modesty of service — the true changeful- 
ness of woman. In that great sense — "La donna e mobile," 
not "Qual piiim' al vento " ; no, nor yet "Variable as the 
shade, by the light quivering aspen made " ; but variable as 
the light, manifold in fair and serene division, that it may 
take the color of all that it falls upon, and exalt it. 

70. II. — I have been trying, thus far, to show you what 
should be the place, and what the power of woman. Now, 
secondly, we ask, What kind of education is to fit her for 
these ? 

And if you indeed think this is a true conception of her 
office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace the course 
of education which would fit her for the one, and raise her 
to the other. 

The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful persons 
now doubt this — is to secure for her such physical training 
and exercise as may confirm her health, and perfect her 
beauty, the highest refinement of that beauty being un- 
attainable without splendor of activity and of delicate 
strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its 
power ; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light 
too far : only remember that all physical freedom is vain to 
produce beauty without a corresponding freedom of heart. 



84 SESAME AND LILIES. 

There are two passages of that poet who is distinguished, 
it seems to me, from all others — not by power, but by 
exquisite Tightness — which point you to the source, and 
describe to you, in a few syllables, the completion of 
womanly beauty. I will read the introductory stanzas, 
but the last is the one I wish you specially to notice : — 

" Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
Then Nature said, ' A lovelier flower 

On earth was never sown. 
This child I to myself will take ; 
She shall be mine, and I will make 

A lady of my own. 

"'Myself will to my darling be 

Both law and impulse ; and with me 

The girl, in rock and plain, 
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
Shall feel an overseeing power 

To kindle, or restrain. 

" ' The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her ; for her the willow bend ; 

Nor shall she fail to see 
Even in the motions of the storm 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

" 'And vital feelings of delight 

Shall rear her form to stately height, 

Her virgin bosom swell. 
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, 
While she and I together live, 
Here in this happy dell.'" 1 

1 Observe, it is " Nature " who is speaking throughout, and who says, 
" While she and I together live." 



of queen's gardens. 85 

" Vital feelings of delight," observe. There are deadly 
feelings of delight ; but the natural ones are vital, necessary 
to very life. 

And they must be feelings of delight, if they are to be 
vital. Do not think you can make a girl lovely, if you do 
not make her happy. There is not one restraint you put on 
a good girl's nature — there is not one check you give to 
her instincts of affection or of effort — which will not be 
indelibly written on her features, with a hardness which is 
all the more painful because it takes away the brightness 
from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the brow 
of virtue. 

71. This for the means: now note the end. Take from 
the same poet, in two lines, a perfect description of womanly 
beauty — 

" A countenance in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet." 

The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can 
only consist in that majestic peace, which is founded in 
the memory of happy and useful years, — full of sweet 
records ; and from the joining of this with that yet more 
majestic childishness, which is still full of change and 
promise; — opening always — modest at once, and bright, 
with hope of better things to be won, and to be bestowed. 
There is no old age where there is still that promise. 

72. Thus, then, you have first to mould her physical 
frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit you, 
to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and thoughts 
which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and 
refine its natural tact of love. 

All such knowledge should be given her as may enable 
her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men : and 
yet it should be given, not as knowledge, — not as if it 



86 SESAME AND LILIES. 

were, or could be, for her an object to know ; but only to 
feel, and to judge. It is of no moment, as a matter of 
pride or perfectness in herself, whether she knows many 
languages or one ; but it is of the utmost, that she should be 
able to show "kindness to a stranger, and to understand the 
sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment to 
her own worth or dignity that she should be acquainted 
with this science or that ; but it is of the highest that she 
should be trained in habits of accurate thought ; that she 
should understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the 
loveliness of natural laws ; and follow at least some one 
path of scientific attainment, as far as to the threshold of 
that bitter Valley of Humiliation, into which only the wisest 
and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves forever 
children, gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of 
little consequence how many positions of cities she knows, 
or how many dates of events, or names of celebrated 
persons — it is not the object of education to turn a woman 
into a dictionary ; but it is deeply necessary that she should 
be taught to enter with her whole personality into the 
history she reads ; to picture the passages of it vitally in 
her own bright imagination ; to apprehend, with her fine 
instincts, the pathetic circumstances and dramatic relations, 
which the historian too often only eclipses by his reasoning, 
and disconnects by his arrangement : it is for her to trace 
the hidden equities of divine reward, and catch sight, through 
the darkness, of the fatal threads of woven fire that connect 
error with its retribution. But, chiefly of all, she is to be 
taught to extend the limits of her sympathy with respect 
to that history which is being for her determined as the 
moments pass in which she draws her peaceful breath : and 
to the contemporary calamity, which, were it but rightly 
mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. She is to 
exercise herself in imagining what would be the effects upon 



of queen's gardens. 87 

her mind and conduct, if she were daily brought into the 
presence of the suffering which is not the less real because 
shut from her sight. She is to be taught somewhat to 
understand the nothingness of the proportion which that 
little world in which she lives and loves, bears to the world 
in which God lives and loves ; — and solemnly she is to be 
taught to strive that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble 
in proportion to the number they embrace, nor her prayer 
more languid than it is for the momentary relief from pain 
of her husband or her child, when it is uttered for the 
multitudes of those who have none to love them, — and is, 
" for all who are desolate and oppressed." 

73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence ; 
perhaps you will not be with me in what I believe is most 
needful for me to say. There is one dangerous science for 
women — one which they must indeed beware how they 
profanely touch — that of theology. Strange, and miserably 
strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their 
powers, and pause at the threshold of sciences where every 
step is demonstrable and sure, they will plunge headlong, 
and without one thought of incompetency, into that science 
in which the greatest men have trembled, and the wisest 
erred. Strange, that they will complacently and pridefully 
bind up whatever vice or folly there is in them, whatever 
arrogance, petulance, or blind incomprehensiveness, into 
one bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange, in 
creatures born to be Love visible, that where they can know 
least, they will condemn first, and think to recommend 
themselves to their Master, by scrambling up the steps of 
His judgment throne, to divide it with Him. Strangest of 
all, that they should think they were led by the Spirit of the 
Comforter into habits of mind which have become in them 
the unmixed elements of home discomfort ; and that they 
dare to turn the Household Gods of Christianity into ugly 



88 SESAME AND LILIES. 

idols of their own ; ■ — spiritual dolls, for them to dress 
according to their caprice ; and from which their husbands 
must turn away in grieved contempt, lest they should be 
shrieked at for breaking them. 

74. I believe then, with this exception, that a girl's 
education should be nearly, in its course and material of 
study, the same as a boy's ; but quite differently directed. 
A woman, in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her 
husband is likely to know, but to know it in a different way. 
His command of it should be foundational and progressive ; 
hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful use. 
Not but that it would often be wiser in men to learn things 
in a womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for 
the discipline and training of their mental powers in such 
branches of study as will be afterwards fittest for social 
service ; but, speaking broadly, a man ought to know any 
language or science he learns, thoroughly — while a woman 
ought to know the same language, or science, only so far as 
may enable her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures, 
and in those of his best friends. 

75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as she 
reaches. There is a wide difference -between elementary 
knowledge and superficial knowledge — between a firm 
beginning, and an infirm attempt at compassing. A woman 
may always help her husband by what she knows, however 
little ; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only 
tease him. 

And indeed, if there were to be any difference between 
a girl's education and a boy's, I should say that of the two 
the girl should be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, 
into deep and serious subjects : and that her range of 
literature should be, not more, but less frivolous ; calculated 
to add the qualities of patience and seriousness to her 
natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit ; and 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 89 

also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. 
I enter not now into any question of choice of books ; only 
let us be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap 
as they fall out of the package of the circulating library, 
wet with the last and lightest spray of the fountain of 
folly. 

76. Or even of the fountain of wit ; for with respect to 
that sore temptation of novel-reading, it is not the badness 
of a novel that we should dread, so much as its over- 
wrought interest. The weakest romance is not so stupefying 
as the lower forms of religious exciting literature, and the 
worst romance is not so corrupting as false history, false 
philosophy, or false political essays. But the best romance 
becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement, it renders the 
ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the 
morbid thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in which 
we shall never be called upon to act. 

77. I speak therefore of good novels only; and our 
modern literature is particularly rich in types of such. 
Well read, indeed, these books have serious use, being 
nothing less than treatises on moral anatomy and chemistry ; 
studies of human nature in the elements of it. But I 
attach little weight to this function : they are hardly ever 
read with earnestness enough to permit them to fulfill it. 
The utmost they usually do is to enlarge somewhat the 
charity of a kind reader, or the bitterness of a malicious 
one ; for each will gather, from the novel, food for her own 
disposition. Those who are naturally proud and envious 
will learn from Thackeray to despise humanity ; those who 
are naturally gentle, to pity it ; those who are naturally 
shallow, to laugh at it. So, also, there might be a service- 
able power in novels to bring before us, in vividness, a 
human truth which we had before dimly conceived ; but 
the temptation to picturesqueness of statement is so great, 



9° 



SESAME AND LILIES. 



that often the best writers of fiction cannot resist it ; and 
our views are rendered so violent and one-sided, that their 
vitality is rather a harm than good. 

78. Without, however, venturing here on any attempt at 
decision of how much novel-reading should be allowed, let 
me at least clearly assert this, that whether novels, or poetry, 
or history be read, they should be chosen, not for their free- 
dom from evil, but for their possession of good. The 
chance and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or 
hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm to a 
noble girl ; but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, 
and his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have 
access to a good library of old and classical books, there 
need be no choosing at all. Keep the modern magazine 
and novel out of your girl's way ; turn her loose into the 
old library every wet day, and let her alone. She will find 
what is good for her ; you cannot ; for there is just this 
difference between the making of a girl's character and a 
boy's — you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a 
rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as 
you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a 
girl into anything. She grows as a flower does, — - she will 
wither without sun ; she will decay in her sheath, as the 
narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough ; she may 
fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without 
help at some moments of her life ; but you cannot fetter 
her ; she must take her own fair form and way, if she take 
any, and in mind as in body, must have always — 

" Her household motions light and free 
And steps of virgin liberty." 

Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a 
field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better than 
you ; and the good ones, too, and will eat some bitter and 



OF QUEENS GARDENS. 9 1 

prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest 
thought would have been so. 

79. Then, in art, keep the finest models before her, and 
let her practice in all accomplishments to be accurate and 
thorough, so as to enable her to understand more than 
she accomplishes. I say the finest models — that is to say, 
the truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those epithets ; they 
will range through all the arts. Try them in music, where 
you might think them the least applicable. I say the 
truest, that in which the notes most closely and faithfully 
express the meaning of the words, or the character of 
intended emotion ; again, the simplest, that in which the 
meaning and melody are attained with the fewest and most 
significant notes possible ; and, finally, the usefullest, that 
music which makes the best words most beautiful, which 
enchants them in our memories each with its own glory of 
sound, and which applies them closest to the heart at the 
moment we need them. 

80. And not only in the material and in the course, but 
yet more earnestly in the spirit of it, let a girl's education 
be as serious as a boy's. You bring up your girls as if they 
were meant for sideboard ornament, and then complain of 
their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you 
give their brothers — appeal to the same grand instincts of 
virtue in them ; teach them, also, that courage and truth are 
the pillars of their being ; — do you think that they would 
not answer that appeal, brave and true as they are even 
now, when you know that there is hardly a girl's school in 
this Christian kingdom where the children's courage or 
sincerity would be thought of half so much importance as 
their way of coming in at a door ; and when the whole 
system of society, as respects the mode of establishing them 
in life, is one rotten plague of cowardice and imposture — 
cowardice, in not daring to let them live, or love, except as 



92 SESAME AND LILIES. 

their neighbors choose ; and imposture, in bringing, for the 
purpose of our own pride, the full glow of the world's worst 
vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when the whole 
happiness of her future existence depends upon her remain- 
ing undazzled ? 

8 1. And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but 
noble teachers. You consider somewhat, before you send 
your boy to school, what kind of a man the master is ; — 
whatsoever kind of a man he is, you at least give him full 
authority over your son, and show some respect for him 
yourself ; — if he comes to dine with you, you do not put 
him at a side table ; you know, also, that at his college, 
your child's immediate tutor will be under the direction of 
some still higher tutor, for whom you have absolute rever- 
ence. ' You do not treat the Dean of Christ Church or the 
Master of Trinity as your inferiors. 

But what teachers do you give your girls, and what 
reverence do you show to the teachers you have chosen ? 
Is a girl likely to think her own conduct, or her own 
intellect, of much importance, when you trust the entire 
formation of her character, moral and intellectual, to a 
person whom you let your servants treat with less respect 
than they do your housekeeper (as if the soul of your 
child were a less charge than jams and groceries), and 
whom you yourself think you confer an honor upon 
by letting her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in 
the evening ? 

82. Thus, then, of literature as her help, and thus of art. 
There is one more help which we cannot do without — one 
which, alone, has sometimes done more than all other 
influences besides, — the help of wild and fair nature. 
Hear this of the education of Joan of Arc : — 

" The education of this poor girl was mean according to 
the present standard ; was ineffably grand, according to a 



OF QUEENS GARDENS. 93 

purer philosophic standard ; and only not good for our age, 
because for us it would be unattainable. . . . 

'•Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to 
the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy 
was on the brink of a boundless forest ; and it was haunted 
to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest (cure) was 
obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep 
them in any decent bounds. . . . 

" But the forests of Domre'my — those were the glories of 
the land ; for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient 
secrets that towered into tragic strength. ' Abbeys there 
were, and abbey windows,' — 'like Moorish temples of the 
Hindoos,' that exercised even princely power both in 
Touraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet 
bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or 
vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, 
and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no 
degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; yet 
many enough to spread a network or awning of Chris- 
tian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen 
wilderness." l 

Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in England, woods 
eighteen miles deep to the centre ; but you can, perhaps, 
keep a fairy or two for your children yet, if you wish to 
keep them. But do you wish it ? Suppose you had each, 
at the back of your houses, a garden large enough for your 
children to play in, with just as much lawn as would give 
them room to run, — no more — and that you could not 
change your abode; but that, if you chose, you could double 
your income, or quadruple it, by digging a coal-shaft in the 
middle of the lawn, and turning the flower-beds into heaps 
of coke. Would you do it ? I hope not. I can tell you, 

1 " Joan of Arc : in reference to M. Michelet's History of France." 
De Quincey's Works, Vol. Ill, page 217. 



94 SESAME AND LILIES. 

you would be wrong if you did, though it gave you income 
sixty-fold instead of four-fold. 

S3. Yet this is what you are doing with all England. 
The whole country is but a little garden, not more than 
enough for your children to run on the lawns of, if you 
would let them all run there. And this little garden you 
will turn into furnace-ground, and fill with heaps of cinders, 
if you can ; and those children of yours, not you, will suffer 
for it. For the fairies will not be all banished ; there are 
fairies of the furnace as of the wood, and their first gifts 
seem to be "sharp arrows of the mighty" ; but their last 
gifts are "coals of juniper." 

84. And yet I cannot — though there is no part of my 
subject that I feel more — press this upon you; for we 
made so little use of the power of nature while we had it, 
that we shall hardly feel what we have lost. Just on the 
other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon, and 
your Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock be)''ond 
the moors of Anglesea, splendid in its heatherly crest, and 
foot planted in the deep sea, once thought of as sacred — 
a divine promontory, looking westward ; the Holy Head or 
Headland, still not without awe when its red light glares 
first through storm. These are the hills, and these the 
bays and blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would 
have been always loved, always fateful in influence on the 
national mind. That Snowdon is your Parnassus ; but 
where are its Muses ? That Holyhead mountain is your 
Island of ^Egina, but where is its Temple to Minerva ? 

85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva had 
achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus, up to the 
year 1848 ? — Here is a little account of a Welsh school, 
from page 261 of the report on Wales, published by the 
Committee of Council on Education. This is a school 
close to a town containing 5,000 persons: — 



OF QUEENS GARDENS. 95 

" I then called up a larger class, most of whom had 
recently come to the school. Three girls repeatedly 
declared that they had never heard of Christ, and two 
that they had never heard of God. Two out of six 
thought Christ was on earth now (' they might have had 
a worse thought, perhaps ') ; three knew nothing about 
the crucifixion. Four out of seven did not know the 
names of the months, nor the number of days in a year. 
They had no notion of addition beyond two and two, or 
three and three ; their minds were perfect blanks." 

Oh, ye women of England ! from the Princess of that 
Wales to the simplest of you, do not think your own children 
can be brought into their true fold of rest while these are 
scattered on the hills, as sheep having no shepherd. And 
do not think your daughters can be trained to the truth of 
their own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which 
God made at once for their school-room and their play- 
ground, lie desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize 
them rightly in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you 
baptize them also in the sweet waters which the great 
Lawgiver strikes forth forever from the rocks of your 
native land — waters which a Pagan would have worshiped 
in their purity, and you only worship with pollution. You 
cannot lead your children faithfully to those narrow axe- 
hewn church altars of yours, while the dark azure altars 
in heaven — the mountains that sustain your island throne, 

— mountains on which a Pagan would have seen the powers 
of heaven rest in every* wreathed cloud — remain for you 
without inscription ; altars built, not to, but by, an Unknown 
God. 

86. III. — Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of the 
teaching, of woman, and thus of her household office, and 
queenliness. We come now to our last, our widest question, 

— What is her queenly office with respect to the state ? 



g6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

Generally we are under an impression that a man's 
duties are public, and a woman's private. But this is not 
altogether so. A man has a personal work or duty, relating 
to his own home, and a public work or duty, which is the 
expansion of the other, relating to the state. So a woman 
has a personal work and duty, relating to her own home, 
and a public work and duty, which is also the expansion 
of that. 

Now the man's work for his own home is, as has been 
said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and defense ; 
the woman's to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness. 

Expand both these functions. The man's duty, as a 
member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, 
in the advance, in the defense of the state. The woman's 
duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the 
ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment 
of the state. 

When the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need 
be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in 
a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his 
country, leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, 
to do his more incumbent work there. 

And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within her 
gates, as the center of order, the balm of distress, and the 
mirror of beauty ; that she is also to be without her gates, 
where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveli- 
ness more rare. 

And as within the human heart there is always set an 
instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct which you 
cannot quench, but only warp and corrupt if you with- 
draw it from its true purpose ; — as there is the intense 
instinct of love, which, rightly disciplined, maintains all 
the sanctities of life, and, misdirected, undermines them ; 
and must do either the one or the other : — so there is in 



OF QUEENS GARD] 97 

the human heart an inextinguishable instinct, the love of 
power, which, rightly directed, maintains all the majesty 
of law and life, and misdirected, wrecks them. 

S7. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of 
man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, and 
God keeps it there. Vainly, as falsely, you blame or 
rebuke the desire of power ! — For Heaven's sake, and 
for Man's sake, desire it all you can. But what power ? 
That is all the question. Power to destroy? the lion's 
limb, and the dragon's breath ? Not so. Power to heal, 
to redeem, to guide, and to guard. Power of the scepter 
and shield ; the power of the royal hand that heals in 
touching, — that binds the fiend and looses the captive ; 
the throne that is founded on the rock of Justice, and 
descended from only by steps of mercy. Will you not 
covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, 
and be no more housewives, but queens ? 

88. It is now long since the women of England arro- 
gated, universally, a title which once belonged to nobility 
only, and, having once been in the habit of accepting the 
simple title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of 
gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the title 
of "Lady," 1 which properly corresponds only to the title 
of "Lord." 

I do not blame them for this ; but only for their narrow 
motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the 
title of Lady, provided they claim, not merely the title, but 

1 I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English 
youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a 
given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title; attainable only 
by certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment ; 
and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonorable 
act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, 
possible, in a nation which loved honor. That it would not be possible 
among us is not to the discredit of the scheme. 



98 SESAME AND LILIES. 

the office and duty signified by it. Lady means " bread- 
giver " or "loaf-giver," and Lord means " maintainer of 
laws," and both titles have reference, not to the law which 
is maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is given 
to the household, but to law maintained for the multitude, 
and to bread broken among the multitude. So that a Lord 
has legal claim only to his title in so far as he is the main- 
tainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords ; and a Lady has 
legal claim to her title only so far as she communicates that 
help to the poor representatives of her Master, which women 
once, ministering to Him of their substance, were permitted 
to extend to that Master Himself ; and when she is known, 
as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread. 

89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power 
of the Dominus, or House Lord, and of the Domina, or 
House-Lady, is great and venerable, not in the number of 
those through whom it has lineally descended, but in the 
number of those whom it grasps within its sway ; it is 
always regarded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty 
is founded on its duty, and its ambition co-relative with its 
beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with the thought of 
being noble ladies, with a train of vassals. Be it so : you 
cannot be too noble, and your train cannot be too great ; 
but see to it that your train is of vassals whom you serve 
and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and feed you ; and 
that the multitude which obeys you is of those whom you 
have comforted, not oppressed, — whom you have redeemed, 
not led into captivity. 

90. And this, which is true of the lower or household 
dominion, is equally true of the queenly dominion ; — that 
highest dignity is opened-to you, if you will also accept that 
highest duty". Re,x et Regina — Roi et Reine — u Right- 
doers " ; they differ .but from the Lady and Lord, in that 
their power is supreme over the mind as over the person — 



OF QUEENS GARDENS. 99 

that they not only feed and clothe, but direct and teach. 
And whether consciously or not, you must be, in many a 
heart, enthroned : there is no putting by that crown ; queens 
you must always be ; queens to your lovers ; queens to 
your husbands and your sons ; queens of higher mystery to 
the world beyond, which bows itself, and will forever bow, 
before the myrtle crown, and the stainless scepter, of 
womanhood. But, alas ! you are too often idle and care- 
less queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while 
you abdicate it in the greatest ; and leaving misrule and 
violence to work their will among men, in defiance of the 
power, which, holding straight in gift from the Prince of 
all Peace, the wicked among you betray, and the good 
forget. 

91. " Prince of Peace." Note that name. When kings 
rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges of the earth, 
they also, in their narrow place, and mortal measure, 
receive the power of it. There are no other rulers than 
they : other rule than theirs is but misrule ; they who govern 
verily " Dei gratia " are all princes, yes, or princesses, of 
peace. There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injus- 
tice, but you women are answerable for it ; not in that you 
have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. Men, 
by their nature, are prone to fight ; they will fight for any 
cause, or for none. It is for you to choose their cause for 
them, and to forbid them when there is no cause. There is 
no suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth, but the 
guilt of it lies with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but 
you should not be able to bear it. Men may tread it down 
without sympathy in their own struggle ; but men are feeble 
in sympathy, and contracted in hope ; it is you only who 
can feel the depths of pain ; and conceive the way of its 
healing. Instead of trying to do this, you turn away from 
it ; you shut yourselves within your park walls and garden 



IOO SESAME AND LILIES. 

gates ; and you are content to know that there is beyond 
them a whole world in wilderness — a world of secrets 
which you dare not penetrate ; and of suffering which you 
dare not conceive. 

92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most amazing 
among the phenomena of humanity. I am surprised at no 
depths to which, when once warped from its honor, that 
humanity can be degraded. I do not wonder at the miser's 
death, with his hands, as they relax, dropping gold. I do 
not wonder at the sensualist's life, with the shroud wrapped 
about his feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed 
murder of a single victim, done by the assassin in the 
darkness of the railway, or reed-shadow of the marsh. I 
do not even wonder at the myriad-handed murder of multi- 
tudes, done boastfully in the daylight, by the frenzy of 
nations, and the immeasurable, unimaginable guilt, heaped 
up from hell to heaven, of their priests, and kings. But 
this is wonderful to me — oh, how wonderful ! — to see the 
tender and delicate woman among you, with her child at 
her breast, and a power, if she would wield it, over it, and 
over its father, purer than the air of heaven, and stronger 
than the seas of earth — nay, a magnitude of blessing which 
her husband would not part with for all that earth itself, 
though it were made of one entire and perfect chrysolite : — 
to see her abdicate this majesty to play at precedence with 
her next-door neighbor ! This is wonderful — oh, wonder- 
ful ! — to see her, with every innocent feeling fresh within 
her, go out in the morning into her garden to play with the 
fringes of its guarded flowers, and lift their heads when 
they are drooping, with her happy smile upon her face, and 
no cloud upon her brow, because there is a little wall around 
her place of peace : and yet she knows, in her heart, if she 
would only look for its knowledge, that, outside of that 
little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is 



OF QUEENS GARDENS. IOI 

torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of 
their life blood. 

93. Have you ever considered what a deep under mean- 
ing there lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in our 
custom of strewing flowers before those whom Ave think 
most happy ? Do you suppose it is merely to deceive them 
into the hope that happiness is always to fall thus in 
showers at their feet ? — that wherever they pass they will 
tread on herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground 
will be made smooth for them by depth of roses ? So 
surely as they believe that, they will have, instead, to walk 
on bitter herbs and thorns ; and the only softness to their 
feet will be of snow. But it is not thus intended they 
should believe ; there is a better meaning in that old 
custom. The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with 
flowers : but they rise behind her steps, not before them. 
" Her feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies 
rosy." 

94. You think that only a lover's fancy; — false and 
vain ! How if it could be true ? You think this also, 
perhaps, only a poet's fancy — 

" Even the light harebell raised its head 
Elastic from her airy tread." 

But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not 
destroy where she passes. She should revive ; the hare- 
bells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think 
I am rushing into wild hyperbole ? Pardon me, not a whit 
— I mean what I say in calm English, spoken in resolute 
truth. You have heard it said — (and I believe there is 
more than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a 
fanciful one) — that flowers only flourish rightly in the 
garden of some one who loves them. I know you would 



102 SESAME AND LILIES. 

like that to be true ; you would think it a pleasant magic if 
you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind 
look upon them : nay, more, if your look had the power, 
not only to cheer, but to guard them ; — if you could bid 
the black blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar spare 
— if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, 
and say to the south wind, in frost — "Come, thou south, 
and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow 
out." This you would think a great thing ? And do you 
think it not a greater thing, that all this (and how much 
more than this !) you can do, for fairer flowers than these — 
flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and 
will love you for having loved them ; — flowers that have 
thoughts like yours, and lives like yours ; which, once saved, 
you save forever ? Is this only a little power ? Far among 
the moorlands and the rocks, — far in the darkness of the 
terrible streets, — these feeble florets are lying, with all their 
fresh leaves torn, and their stems broken — will you never 
go down to them, nor set them in order in their little 
fragrant beds, nor fence them in their trembling from the 
fierce wind ? Shall morning follow morning, for you, but 
not for them ; and the dawn rise to watch, far away, those 
frantic Dances of Death ; x but no dawn rise to breathe 
upon these living banks of wild violet, and woodbine, and 
rose; nor call to you, through your casement, — call (not 
giving you the name of the English poet's lady, but the 
name of Dante's great Matilda, who on the edge of happy 
Lethe, stood, wreathing flowers with flowers), saying : — 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown, 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad 
And the musk of the roses blown." 

1 See note, p. 43. 



<tF OUEEXS CAKOEN'S. IO3 

Will you not go down among them ? — among those sweet 
living things, whose new courage, sprung from the earth 
with the deep color of heaven upon it, is starting up in 
strength of goodly spire; and whose purity, washed from 
the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the flower of prom- 
ise ; — and still they turn to you, and for you, "The Lark- 
spur listens — I hear, I hear! And the Lily whispers — I 
wait." 

95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when I read 
you that first stanza ; and think that I had forgotten them ? 
Hear them now : — 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown. 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate, alone." 

Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this 
sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you ? Did you ever hear, 
not of a Maude, but a Madeleine, who went down to her 
garden in the dawn, and found one waiting at the gate, 
whom she supposed to be the gardener ? Have you not 
sought Him often ; — sought Him in vain, all through the 
night ; — sought Him in vain at the gate of that old garden 
where the fiery sword is set ? He is never there ; but at 
the gate of this garden He is waiting always — waiting to 
take your hand — ready to go down to see the fruits of the 
valley, to see whether the vine has flourished, and the 
pomegranate budded. There you shall see with Him the 
little tendrils of the vines that His hand is guiding — there 
you shall see the pomegranate springing where His hand 
cast the sanguine seed ; — more : you shall see the troops 
of the angel keepers, that, with their wings, wave away the 
hungry birds from the pathsides where He has sown, and 
call to each other between the vineyard rows, "Take us the 



104 SESAME AND LILIES. 

foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines 
have tender grapes." Oh — you queens — you queens; 
among the hills and happy greenwood of this land of yours, 
shall the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have 
nests ; and in your cities, shall the stones cry out against 
you, that they are the only pillows where the Son of Man 
can lay His head ? 



ANNOTATIONS. 



51. Spectral: merely having the appearance of ; unreal. 

The likeness of a kingly crown have on : these words are 
borrowed from Milton's description of death. — " Paradise Lost," 
Book II. 

56. Orlan'do and Ros'alind : characters in Shakespeare's play 
"As You Like It." 

CordeTia : banished daughter of King Lear. 

Desdemon'a: heroine of the drama "Othello." 

Isabella: a character in " Measure for Measure." 

Hermi'one: the wife, and Perdita, the daughter of Leontes, 
King of Sicily, in " A Winter's Tale." 

Im'ogen : heroine of the drama " Cymbeline." 

Queen Katherine: first wife of Henry VIII, and heroine of the 
drama " Henry VIII." 

Sil'via : the lady beloved by Valentine in " Two Gentlemen of 
Verona." 

Viola : heroine of the drama " Twelfth Night." 

Helena: heroine of " All's Well that Ends Well." 

Virgilia: wife of Coriolanus, in Shakespeare's play of that 
name. 

Julia: a character in " Two Gentlemen of Verona." 

Hero and Beatrice: characters in the drama "Much Ado 
About Nothing." 

The unlessoned girl: Portia, in " Merchant of Venice." She 
uses these words concerning herself. 



ANNOTATIONS. IO5 

58. Regan and Goneril : sisters of Cordelia and daughters of 
King Lear. 

59. Dandle Dinmont: an eccentric character in Scott's novel 
••Guy Mannering." 

Rob Roy : hero of Scott's story of the same name. 

Clav'erhouse : a character in " The Bride of Lammermoor." 

Ellen Douglas : heroine of Scott's " Lady of the Lake." 

Flora Maclvor : heroine of " Waverley." 

Rose Branwardine : a character in "Waverley." 

Catherine Seyton : a character in " The Abbot." 

Dian'a Vernon : heroine of " Rob Roy." 

Lilias Redgauntlet: a character in Scott's story " Redgauntlet." 

Alice Bridgenorth : heroine of " Peveril of the Peak." 

Alice Lee: a character in "Woodstock." 

Jeanie Deans: a character in '• Heart of Midlothian." 

60. A love poem to his dead lady : Be'atrice, to whom the poet 
Dante had been deeply attached, died in her 24th year. Dante's 
love for her became to him a source of poetic inspiration, and he 
represents her as his guide in the " Paradise" 

Dan'te Rossett'i : a distinguished artist and poet, and a per- 
sonal friend of Ruskin. 

61. Andromache ( An-drom'-a-ke): wife of Hector, a Trojan 
hero in the " Iliad." 

Cassan'dra : daughter of Priam, King of Troy. She was gifted 
with the power of prophecy, but Apollo, whom she had offended, 
cursed her so that no one would believe her predictions. 

Nausic'aa: daughter of the King of the Phcea'cians, whose 
court was visited by Ulysses in his wanderings (" Odyssey "). She 
is a type of maidenly purity. 

PeneTo-pe : wife of Ulysses, — type of wifely constancy. 

Antig'one: heroine of Sophocles' drama of that name, — type 
of filial devotion. 

Iphigenia (If-i-gen-i'a) : daughter of Agamemnon, leader of the 
Greeks in the Trojan war, who offered her as a sacrifice to pro- 
pitiate the offended goddess Diana. 

Alces'tis : wife of Adme'tus, to save whose life she offered to die. 
Hercules brought her to life and restored her to her husband. 



106 SESAME AND LILIES. 

62. Una: an allegorical character in Spenser's " Faery Queene." 
She represents Truth. 

Brit'omart: a character in the same poem. She typifies 
Chastity. 

Lawgiver of all the earth : Moses, who was adopted by an 
Egyptian princess, daughter of Pharoah. — See Exodus ii. 5-10. 

Athe'na: see Annotations to Kings' Treasuries, 45. 

The Egyptian ' Spirit of Wisdom ' is the goddess A r eith. 

Aeschylus (Es'-ke-lus) : a celebrated tragic dramatist of Greece. 

68. A Vestal temple : a temple sacred to Vesta, goddess of the 
hearth, and therefore dedicated to purity and peace. 

Pharos : a lighthouse built on an island at the entrance of the 
port of Alexandria in Egypt, one of the wonders of the ancient 
world. 

69. " La donna e mobile": woman is changeable. 

" Qual pi'um' al vento ": like a feather in the wind. 
" Variable as the shade," etc.: see Scott's " Marmion," Canto 
vi. Stanza 30. 

70. That poet who is distinguished, etc. : Wordsworth. 

71. The lines quoted are from Wordsworth's poem entitled 
" She was a Phantom of Delight." 

81. Christ Church: one of the colleges forming the University 
of Oxford. 

Trinity : one of the colleges belonging to the University of 
Cambridge. 

82. Joan of Arc: the French peasant girl of Domre'my whose 
courage and enthusiasm enabled her to lead the French troops to 
victory over the English invaders (1402 a.d.). 

Touraine: a province of France. 

German Diets : legislative bodies in Germany are called Diets. 

84. Snowdon: the highest mountain in Wales (3571 feet). 

Holy Head : a seaport town on an island west of the island of 
Anglesea, with which it is connected by a causeway. 

Parnas'sus : a mountain in Greece, believed to be a favorite 
haunt of Apollo and the Muses. 

Island of Aegi'na: an island of Greece, sixteen miles from 
Athens, anciently celebrated for its magnificent temples. 



ANNOTATIONS. 107 

Minerva : Roman name for Athena, goddess of wisdom. 

S7. Power of the royal hand that heals in touching: an 
allusion to the belief formerly current in England that the sov- 
ereign had the gift of healing by a touch. 

90. Rex et Regi'na (Latin) and Roi et Reine (French) for king 
and queen. Derived from the Latin verb regere, to direct or 
guide straight ; hence right. 

91. Dei gratia : by the grace of God. 

93. " Her feet have touched the meadows" etc. - - from Tenny- 
son's •• Maud."' 

94. The lines quoted are from Scott's " Lady of the Lake," 
Canto i. Stanza iS. 

Dances of Death: pleasures of a life of dissipation. 

MatiLda: an Italian countess, benefactress of the Church. 
Matilda *(Dante) and Maud (Tennyson) are really the same 
name. 

Lethe : " in Greek mythology, a river of the underworld, a drink 
of whose waters caused forgetfulness of the past. Dante, how- 
ever, attributed to its waters a double power : — 

" Power to take away 
Remembrance of offence " — and — " to bring 
Remembrance back of every good deed done." 

Purgatorio xxix. 134. 

" Come into the garden, Maud" etc. : quoted from Tennyson's 
poem " Maud." 

95. Madeleine: same as Magdalene. See John xx. 20. 

That old garden where the fiery sword is set : see Genesis 
iii. 24. 

Sanguine seed : the seeds of the pomegranate seem to be blood- 
red in color. Sanguine is derived from the Latin sanguis, blood. 



" Wealth is simply one of the greatest powers which can be entrusted 
to human hands ; a power not, indeed, to be envied, because it seldom 
makes us happy ; but still less to be abdicated or despised ; while, in 
these days, and in this country, it has become a power al> the more 
notable, in that the possessions of a rich man are not represented, as 
they used to be, by wedges of gold or coffers of jewels, but by masses 
of men variously employed, over whose bodies and minds the wealth, 
according to its direction, exercises harmful or helpful influence, and 
becomes, in that alternative, Mammon either of Unrighteousness or 
Righteousness," — From Political Economy of Art. 



UNTO THIS LAST. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

In the year 1S60, Ruskin sent to his friend Thackeray, 
who was then editing the "Cornhill Magazine," some papers 
in which he had embodied his conception of a true social 
science. After the publication of the first three papers, in 
which the author had vehemently assailed what he deemed 
fallacies in the commonly accepted theories in social eco- 
nomics, Thackeray wrote that the outcry against them was 
so loud and bitter that he could admit only one more. 
These four papers were, in the following year, published by 
Mr. Ruskin under the title "Unto This Last." In the preface, 
he says that he believes them to be " the truest, rightest- 
worded, and most serviceable things " he had written. 

To these he added, in 1862, six essays on fundamental 
questions affecting the commercial relations of men, and 
entitled them " Munera Pulveris." In both series, he pro- 
tests, with the earnestness of Luther, against the domina- 
tion of the selfish " let-alone " doctrines of the dictators in 
Political Economy, to the practical workings of which, he 
attributes, in large measure, the wide-spread distress and 
misery attending our mechanical civilization. 

These utterances, which so offended the indolent self- 
satisfaction of the public mind, were neither petulant nor 
hasty, as they have seemed to many, but were the deliberate 
conclusions of several years of personal observation and 
practical effort among the workingmen of England. 



I IO UNTO THIS LAST. 

In all his teachings on art, Mr. Ruskin truthfully says 
that he had brought everything to its roots in human 
passion or human hope. In 1857, he had delivered, at 
Manchester, two lectures on " The Political Economy of 
Art,''' in which he had maintained that the true economy 
of a state is in so regulating its forces that " the joy 
which is to be a joy forever " shall be " a joy for all." 
Mr. Collingwood says that there are very few points in 
these papers which were then so vigorously contested that 
have not since been practically conceded. The strongest 
evidence of their leavening influence, however, is shown in 
the surprise with which intelligent students of social science 
to-day read of the angry denunciations which forbade the 
publication of this "hopeless rubbish" in the magazines 
of thirty years ago. 



In his choice of a title " Unto This Last," based upon the 
parable (Matt. xx. 1-14) in which Jesus expresses his views 
on work and wages, Ruskin reveals his habit of referring all 
questions of life to the moral principles of the Bible. 

In one of his letters in "Time and Tide," he has called 
attention to a fact seldom thought of ; namely, that Christ's 
main, or direct, teachings have regard largely to the use and 
misuse of money. 

The modern state, considered as a body of men acting 
under a common social bond — a Commonwealth — is con- , 
trolled mainly by commercial laws. Hence the " Wealth of 
Nations " has become the text, as well as the text-book of 
Political Economy. So, in his preface, Mr. Ruskin tells his 
readers that, " The real gist of these lectures, their central 
meaning and aim, is to give, as I believe, for the first time 
in plain English, a logical definition of Wealth." 



INTRODUCTORY. I I I 

"Their second object is to show that the acquisition of 
wealth is finally possible only under certain moral conditions 
of society of which the first is a belief in the attainability 
of honesty.'' 

For the practical realization of the best conditions in the 
state, Mr. Ruskin advocates : — 

i. Training schools for youth to be established and con- 
trolled by Government in which shall be taught, in addition 
to some subjects of knowledge, the laws of health ; habits 
of gentleness and justice ; the callings by which the students 
are to live. 

2. In connection with the technical classes, the establish- 
ment of Government workshops for the production and sale 
of all necessaries, — not to interfere with private enterprise, 
but to furnish a standard of good work and honest dealing. 

3. That any person out of employment should be set to 
work in the nearest Government workshop ; the ignorant to 
be taught, and those objecting to be compelled to work. 

4. Such work to be paid for at a sufficient fixed rate, 
according to the nature of the employment. 

5. For the destitute aged, comfort and home to be pro- 
vided ; and this, not as an alms, but as a just recognition 
of worth)- work done in days of strength ; in the belief that 
a laborer serves his country with a spade just as honorably 
as he who serves with sword, pen, or lancet. 

A recent magazine writer says that these propositions, 
which were considered dangerous doctrine when Ruskin 
made them, are all, either already adopted, or seriously 
discussed by practical economists. 



The first of these papers, entitled The Roots of Honor, 
ts of the responsibilities and duties of those who hold 
positions of trust and service. 



I I 2 UNTO THIS LAST. 

Mr. Ruskin takes issue with the writers on political econ- 
omy in their view of the motives which should actuate men 
in their dealings with one another. While political econ- 
omy holds that the efficient stimulus to human effort lies in 
the desire to advance self by taking an avaricious advantage 
of the necessities or the weakness of others, Mr. Ruskin 
maintains that society can really prosper only by a general 
practice of the principles of altruistic justice taught in the 
Golden Rule. The teachings of the former make of man a 
"covetous machine," and produce antagonism between 
those whose relations should be mutually serviceable. To 
the operation of the selfish laws enunciated by the econ- 
omists, Mr. Ruskin attributes the frequent conflicts between 
labor and capital. The best work will be done when the 
worker works heartily ; i.e., when " the motive force is 
brought to its greatest strength by its own proper fuel ; 
namely, by the affections." 

This position is enforced by reference to the relations of 
master and operative as seen in domestic service and in 
army experience, where personal devotion may easily be 
secured by the sympathetic consideration, which is the secret 
of real justice. In the usual administration of commercial 
and manufacturing enterprises, however, the custom of 
varying the wages according to the demand for labor pre- 
vents the affections from becoming an active motive force. 

To overcome the disaffection which is the natural effect 
of the working of this principle in economics, Mr. Ruskin 
suggests : First, that, in labor, as in the professions, a regu- 
lar rate of wages should be established, irrespective of any 
consideration, except that of skill: Second, that a system 
should be adopted by which the workman may have a per- 
manent interest in the success of the employer's business. 

In "Time and Tide," Ruskin has explained definitely his 
idea of cooperation. He does not advocate the cooperation 



[NTRODUCTORY. I I 5 

of partnership on the communistic principle, but the pro- 
portionate division of all profits above a certain amount. 
■• The general tendency of such a system," he thinks, " is 
to increase the facilities of advancement among the subor- 
dinates ; to stimulate their ambition ; to enable them to lay 
by, if they are provident, more ample provision for declin- 
ing years ; and to form, in the end, a vast class wholly dif- 
ferent from the existing operative — able to procure all the 
comforts of life, and to devote some leisure to the attain- 
ments of liberal education and to the other objects of free 
life." 

The motive principle in commerce, no less than in other 
departments of public service, should be self-sacrifice ; not 
to get as much and to give as little as possible, but to be 
willing to suffer loss, if need be, to maintain integrity. 



The Veins of Wealth treats of the true source of a nation's 
riches. 

In the discussion of this part of the subject, Mr. Ruskin 
maintains that a science which is based upon the principle 
of supply and demand should be named mercantile econ- 
omy, — that which relates to pay or wages, — not political 
economy, which, according to its original meaning, relates 
to citizenship or the administration of the state. 

The aim of this paper is to show that the -true wealth of 
a state consists in the largest possible number of healthy, 
happy, noble men and women, and to refute the fallacy that 
the accumulation of vast riches in the hands of a few is of 
real advantage to a nation. "The real science of political 
economy is that which teaches nations to desire and labor 
for the things that lead to life." 



I 14 UNTO THIS LAST. 

Qui Jiaticatis Terrain relates to the just distribution of a 
nation's riches. In the practical wisdom of Solomon, Mr. 
Ruskin finds the true science of getting rich, which is 
simply just dealing ; for riches gained by fraud and oppres- 
sion — "the taking advantage of a man's necessities in 
order to obtain his labor or property at a reduced price " — 
can ultimately profit the possessor nothing. 

Mr. Ruskin believes that there must always be inequali- 
ties of fortune, as well as of talents ; but that if, in all deal- 
ings with one another, men would obey the law of justice in 
love, conflicts bred of selfish striving would cease. 

The solution of the problem, in Mr. Ruskin's opinion, is 
to be reached by discovering what constitutes justice in 
laws regulating the payment of labor. Equity in wages 
consists in an accurate exchange of time, strength, and 
skill. It is sometimes difficult to determine the exact worth 
of work ; but, none the less, it has a definite value. Justice 
is thwarted when wages are determined by a number of 
competing workers, who are under-bidding one another. 

He thinks that the application of the principles of modern 
political economy leads to a practical denial of the prin- 
ciples of Christ's religion, which Christian nations profess 
to follow. 



ESSAY I. 

THE ROOTS OF HONOR. 

Among the delusions which at different periods have 
possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the 
human race, perhaps the most curious — certainly the least 
creditable — is the modern soi-disant science of political 
economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code 
of social action may be determined irrespectively of the 
influence of social affection. 



THE ROOTS OF HONOR. I I 5 

Of course, as in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witch- 
craft, and other such popular creeds, political economy has 
a plausible idea at the root of it. ''The social affections," 
says the economist, "are accidental and disturbing elements 
in human nature ; but avarice and the desire of progress are 
constant elements. Let us eliminate the inconstants, and, 
considering the human being merely as a covetous machine, 
examine by what laws of labor, purchase, and sale, the 
greatest accumulative result in wealth is attainable. Those 
laws once determined, it will be for each individual after- 
wards to introduce as much of the disturbing affectionate 
element as he chooses, and to determine for himself the 
result on the new conditions supposed." 

This would be a perfectly logical and successful method 
of analysis, if the accidentals afterwards to be introduced 
were of the same nature as the powers first examined. 
Supposing a body in motion to be influenced by constant 
and inconstant forces, it is usually the simplest way of 
examining its course to trace it first under the persistent 
conditions, and afterwards introduce the causes of variation. 
But the disturbing elements in the social problem are not 
of the same nature as the constant ones ; they alter the 
essence of the creature under examination the moment they 
are added ; they operate, not mathematically, but chemically, 
introducing conditions which render all our previous knowl- 
edge unavailable. We made learned experiments upon pure 
nitrogen, and have convinced ourselves that it is a very 
manageable gas : but behold ! the thing which we have 
practically to deal with is its chloride ; and this, the moment 
we touch it on our established principles, sends us and our 
apparatus through the ceiling. 

Observe, I neither impugn nor doubt the conclusions of 
the science, if its terms are accepted. I am simply unin- 
terested in them, as I should be in those of a science of 



I 1 6 UNTO THIS LAST. 

gymnastics which assumed that men had no skeletons. It 
might be shown, on that supposition, that it would be 
advantageous to roll the students up into pellets, flatten 
them into cakes, or stretch them into cables ; and that 
when these results were effected, the re-insertion of the 
skeleton would be attended with various inconveniences to 
theif constitution. The reasoning might be admirable, the 
conclusions true, and the science deficient only in applica- 
bility. Modern political economy stands on a precisely 
similar basis. Assuming, not that the human being has 
no skeleton, but that it is all skeleton, it founds an ossi- 
fiant theory of progress on this negation of a soul ; and 
having shown the utmost that may be made of bones, and 
constructed a number of interesting geometrical figures with 
death's-heads and humeri, successfully proves the incon- 
venience of the reappearance of a soul among these cor- 
puscular structures. I do not deny the truth of this theory : 
I simply deny its applicability to the present phase of the 
world. 

This inapplicability has been curiously manifested during 
the embarrassment caused by the late strikes of our work- 
men. Here occurs one of the simplest cases, in a pertinent 
and positive form, of the first vital problem which political 
economy has to deal with (the relation between employer 
and employed) ; and at a severe crisis, when lives in multi- 
tudes, and wealth in masses, are at stake, the political econ- 
omists are helpless — practically mute ; no demonstrable 
solution of the difficulty can be given by them, such as 
may convince or calm the opposing parties. Obstinately 
the masters take one view of the matter ; obstinately the 
operatives another ; and no political science can set them 
at one. 

It would be strange if it could, it being not by " science " 
of any kind that men were ever intended to be set at one. 



i ROOTS OF HONOR. 1 \"J 

Disputant after disputant vainly tries to show that the 
interests of the masters are, or are not, antagonistic to 
those of the men : none of the pleaders ever seeming to 
remember that it does not absolutely or always follow that 
the persons must be antagonistic because their interests are. 
If there is only a crust of bread in the house, and mother 
and children are starving, their interests are not the same. 
If the mother eats it, the children want it ; if the children 
eat it, the mother must go hungry to her work. Yet it 
does not necessarily follow that there will be "antagonism" 
between them, that they will fight for the crust, and that 
the mother, being strongest, will get it, and eat it. Neither, 
in any other case, whatever the relations of the persons 
may be, can it be assumed for certain that, because their 
interests .are diverse, they must necessarily regard each 
other with hostility, and use violence or cunning to obtain 
the advantage. 

Even if this were so, and it were as just as it is convenient 
to consider men as actuated by no other moral influences 
than those which affect rats or swine, the logical conditions 
of the question are still indeterminable. It can never be 
shown generally either that the interests of master and 
laborer are alike, or that they are opposed ; for, according 
to circumstances, they may be either. It is, indeed, always 
the interest of both that the work should be rightly done, 
and a just price obtained for it ; but, in the division of 
profits, the gain of the one may or may not be the loss of 
the other. It is not the master's interest to pay wages so 
low as to leave the men sickly and depressed, nor the work- 
man's interest to be paid high wages if the smallness of the 
master's profit hinders him from enlarging his business, or 
conducting it in a safe and liberal way. A stoker ought 
not to desire high pay if the company is too poor to keep 
the engine-wheels in repair. 



I I S UNTO THIS LAST. 

And the varieties of circumstances which influence these 
reciprocal interests are so endless, that all endeavor to de- 
duce rules of action from balance of expediency is in vain. 
And it is meant to be in vain. For no human actions 
ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided 
by balances of expediency, but by balances of justice. He 
has therefore rendered all endeavors to determine expedi- 
ency futile forever more. No man ever knew, or can know, 
what will be the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of 
any given line of conduct. But every man may know, and 
most of us do know, what is a just and unjust act. And all 
of us may know also, that the consequences of justice will 
be ultimately the best possible, both to others and ourselves, 
though we can neither say what is best, nor how it is likely 
to come to pass. 

I have said balances of justice, meaning, in the term jus- 
tice, to include affection, — such affection as one man owes 
to another. All right relations between master and opera- 
tive, and all their best interests, ultimately depend on these. 

We shall find the best and simplest illustration of the 
relations of master and operative in the position of domestic 
servants. 

We will suppose that the master of a household desires 
only to get as much work out of his servants as he can, at 
the rate of wages he gives. He never allows them to be 
idle ; feeds them as poorly and lodges them as ill as they 
will endure, and in all things pushes his requirements to the 
exact point beyond which he cannot go without forcing the 
servant to leave him. In doing this, there is no violation on 
his part of what is commonly called "justice." He agrees 
with the domestic for his whole time and service, and takes 
them ; the limits of hardship in treatment being fixed by the 
practice of other masters in his neighborhood ; that is to 
say, by the current rate of wages for domestic labor. If 



THE ROOTS OF HONOR. IIO, 

the servant can get a better place, he is free to take one, 
and the master can only tell what is the real market value 
of his labor, by requiring as much as he will give. 

This is the politico-economical view of the case, according 
to the doctors of that science, who assert that by this pro- 
cedure the greatest average of work will be obtained from 
the servant, and therefore the greatest benefit to the com- 
munity, and through the community, by reversion, to the 
servant himself. 

That, however, is not so. It would be so if the servant 
were an engine of which the motive power was steam, mag- 
netism, gravitation, or any other agent of calculable force. 
But he being, on the contrary, an engine whose motive 
power is a Soul, the force of this very peculiar agent, as an 
unknown quantity, enters into all the political economist's 
equations, without his knowledge, and falsifies every one of 
their results. The largest quantity of work will not be done 
by this curious engine for pay, or under pressure, or by 
help of any kind of fuel which may be applied by the 
chaldron. It will be done only when the motive force, 
that is to say, the will or spirit of the creature, is brought 
to its greatest strength by its own proper fuel ; namely, 
by the affections. 

It may indeed happen, and does happen often, that if the 
master is a man of sense and energy, a large quantity of 
material work may be done under mechanical pressure, 
enforced by strong will and guided by wise method ; also 
it may happen, and does happen often, that if the master is 
indolent and weak (however good-natured), a very small 
quantity of work, and that bad, may be produced by the 
servant's undirected strength, and contemptuous gratitude. 
But the universal law of the matter is that, assuming any 
given quantity of energy and sense in master and servant, 
the greatest material result obtainable by them will be, not 



120 UNTO THIS LAST. 

through antagonism to each other, but through affection for 
each other ; and that if the master, instead of endeavoring 
to get as much work as possible from the servant, seeks 
rather to render his appointed and necessary work beneficial 
to him, and to forward his interests in all just and whole- 
some ways, the real amount of work ultimately done, or of 
good rendered, by the person so cared for, will indeed be 
the greatest possible. 

Observe, I say, " of good rendered," for a servant's work 
is not necessarily or always the best thing he can give his 
master. But good of all kinds, whether in material service, 
in protective watchfulness of his master's interest and credit, 
or in joyful readiness to seize unexpected and irregular 
occasions of help. 

Nor is this one whit less generally true because indulgence 
will be frequently abused, and kindness met with ingratitude. 
For the servant who, gently treated, is ungrateful, treated 
ungently, will be revengeful ; and the man who is dishonest 
to a liberal master, will be injurious to an unjust one. 

In any case, and with any person, this unselfish treatment 
will produce the most effective return. Observe, I am here 
considering the affections wholly as a motive power ; not at 
all as things in themselves desirable or noble, or in any 
other way abstractedly good. I look at them simply as 
an anomalous force, rendering every one of the ordinary 
political economist's calculations nugatory ; while, even if 
he desired to introduce this new element into his estimates, 
he has no power of dealing with it ; for the affections only 
become a true motive power when they ignore every other 
motive and condition of political economy. Treat the 
servant kindly, with the idea of turning his gratitude to 
account, and you will get, as you deserve, no gratitude, nor 
any value for your kindness ; but treat him kindly without 
any economical purpose, and all economical purposes will 



illK ROOTS OF HONOR. 121 

be answered: in this, as in all other matters, whosoever will 
save his life shall lose it, and whoso loses it shall find it. 1 

The next clearest and simplest example of relation 
between master and operative is that which exists between 
the commander of a regiment and his men. 

Supposing the officer only desires to apply the rules of 
discipline so as, with least trouble to himself, to make the 
regiment most effective, he will not be able, by any rules, or 
administration of rules, on this selfish principle, to develop 
the full strength of his subordinates. If a man of sense and 
firmness, he may, as in the former instance, produce a better 
result than would be obtained by the irregular kindness of a 

1 The difference between the two modes of treatment, and between 
their effective material results, may be seen very accurately by a com- 
parison of- the relations of Esther and Charlie in Bleak House, with 
those of Miss Brass and the Marchioness in Master Humphrey's Clock. 

The essential value and truth of Dickens's writings have been unwisely 
lost sight of by many thoughtful persons merely because he presents his 
truth with some color of caricature. Unwisely, because Dickens's carica- 
ture, though often gross, is never mistaken. Allowing for his manner 
of telling them, the things he tells us are always true. I wish that he 
could think it right to limit his brilliant exaggeration to works written 
only for public amusement ; and when he takes up a subject of high 
national importance, such as that which he handled in Hard Times, that 
he would use severer and more accurate analysis. The usefulness of 
that work (to my mind, in several respects, the greatest he has written) 
is with many persons seriously diminished because Mr. Bounderby is 
a dramatic monster, instead of a characteristic example of a worldly 
master ; and Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection, instead of a 
characteristic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose the 
use of Dickens's wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a circle 
of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every 
book he has written ; and all of them, but especially Hard Times, should 
lie studied with close and earnest care by persons interested in social 
questions. They will find much that is partial, and, because partial, 
apparently unj ust ; but if they examine all the evidence on the other 
side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it will appear, after all their 
trouble, that his view was the finally right one, grossly and sharply told. 



122 UNTO THIS LAST. 

weak officer ; but let the sense and firmness be the same in 
both cases, and assuredly the officer who has the most direct 
personal relations with his men, the most care for their 
interests, and the most value for their lives, will develop 
their effective strength, through their affection for his own 
person, and trust in his character, to a degree wholly unat- 
tainable by other means. The law applies still more 
stringently as the numbers concerned are larger ; a 
charge may often be successful, though the men dislike 
their officers ; a battle has rarely been won, unless they 
loved their general. 

Passing from these simple examples to the more com- 
plicated relations existing between a manufacturer and his 
workmen, we are met first by certain curious difficulties, 
resulting, apparently, from a harder and colder state of 
moral elements. It is easy to imagine an enthusiastic 
affection existing among soldiers for the colonel. Not so 
easy to imagine an enthusiastic affection among cotton- 
spinners for the proprietor of the mill. A body of men 
associated for purposes of robbery (as a Highland clan in 
ancient times) shall be animated by perfect affection, and 
every member of it be ready to lay down his life for the life 
of his chief. But a band of men associated for purposes of 
legal production and accumulation is usually animated, it 
appears, by no such emotions, and none of them is in any- 
wise willing to give his life for the life of his chief. Not 
only are we met by this apparent anomaly, in moral matters, 
but by others connected with it, in administration of system. 
For a servant or a soldier is engaged at a definite rate of 
wages, for a definite period ; but a workman at a rate of 
wages variable according to the demand for labor, and with 
the risk of being at any time thrown out of his situation by 
chances of trade. Now, as under these contingencies, no 
action of the affections can take place, but only an explosive 



THE ROOTS OF HONOR. 1 23 

action of ^affections, two points offer themselves for con- 
sideration in the matter. 

The first — How far the rate of wages may be so regu- 
lated as not to vary with the demand for labor. 

The second — How far it is possible that bodies of work- 
men may be engaged and maintained at such fixed rate of 
wages (whatever the state of trade may be), without enlarg- 
ing or diminishing their number, so as to give them per- 
manent interest in the establishment with which they are 
connected, like that of the domestic servants in an old 
family, or an esprit de corps, like that of the soldiers in a 
crack regiment. 

The first question is, I say, how far it may be possible 
to fix the rate of wages irrespectively of the demand for 
labor. 

Perhaps one of the most curious facts in the history of 
human error is the denial by the common political econo- 
mist of the possibility of thus regulating wages ; while for 
all the important, and much of the unimportant, labor on 
the earth, wages are already regulated. 

We do not sell our prime-ministership by Dutch auction ; 
nor, on the decease of a bishop, whatever may be the 
general advantages of simony, do we (yet) offer his diocese 
to the clergyman who will take the episcopacy at the low- 
est contract. We (with exquisite sagacity of political 
economy ! ) do indeed sell commissions, but not openly, 
generalships : sick, we do not inquire for a physician who 
takes less than a guinea ; litigious, we never think of reduc- 
ing six-and-eightpence to four-and-sixpence ; caught in a 
shower, we do not canvass the cabmen, to find one who 
values his driving at less than sixpence a mile. 

It is true that in all these cases there is, and in every 
conceivable case there must be, ultimate reference to the 
presumed difficulty of the work, or number of candidates 



I 24 UNTO THIS LAST. 

for the office. If it were thought that the labor necessary 
to make a good physician would be gone through by a 
sufficient number of students with the prospect of only half- 
guinea fees, public consent would soon withdraw the un- 
necessary half-guinea. In this ultimate sense, the price of 
labor is indeed always regulated by the demand for it ; 
but so far as the practical and immediate administration 
of the matter is regarded, the best labor always has been, 
and is, as all labor ought to be, paid by an invariable 
standard. 

"What!" the reader, perhaps, answers amazedly : "pay 
good and bad workmen alike?" 

Certainly. The difference between one prelate's sermons 
and his successor's, — or between one physician's opinion 
and another's — is far greater, as respects the qualities of 
mind involved, and far more important in result to you 
personally, than the difference between good and bad lay- 
ing of bricks (though that is greater than most people 
suppose). Yet you pay with equal fee, contentedly, the 
good and bad workmen upon your soul, and the good and 
bad workmen upon your body ; much more may you pay, 
contentedly, with equal fees, the good and bad workmen 
upon your house. 

" Nay, but I choose my physician and (?) my clergy- 
man, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work." 
By all means, also, choose your bricklayer ; that is the 
proper reward of the good workman, to be " chosen." The 
natural and right system respecting all labor is, that it 
should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman 
employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The false, 
unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad work- 
man is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either 
take the place of the good, or force him by his competition 
to work for an inadequate sum. 



THE ROOTS OF HONOR. 1 25 

This equality of wages, then, being the first object towards 
which we have to discover the directest available road ; the 
second is, as above stated, that of maintaining constant 
numbers of workmen in employment, whatever may be the 
accidental demand for the article they produce. 

I believe the sudden and extensive inequalities of demand 
which necessarily arise in the mercantile operations of an 
active nation, constitute the only essential difficulty which 
has to be overcome in a just organization of labor. The 
subject opens into too many branches to admit of being 
investigated in a paper of this kind ; but the following 
general facts bearing on it may be noted. 

The wages which enable any workman to live are neces- 
sarily higher, if his work is liable to intermission, than if it 
is assured and continuous ; and however severe the struggle 
for work may become, the general law will always hold, that 
men must get more daily pay if, on the average, they can 
only calculate on work three days a week, than they would 
require if they were sure of work six days a week. Sup- 
posing that a man cannot live on less than a shilling a day, 
his seven shillings he must get, either for three days' violent 
work, or six days' deliberate work. The tendency of all 
modern mercantile operations is to throw both wages and 
trade into the form of a lottery, and to make the workman's 
pay depend on intermittent exertion, and the principal's 
profit on dexterously used chance. 

In what partial degree, I repeat, this may be necessary, 
in consequence of the activities of modern trade, I do not 
here investigate ; contenting myself with the fact, that in 
its fatalest aspects it is assuredly unnecessary, and results 
merely from love of gambling on the part of the masters, 
and from ignorance and sensuality in the men. The masters 
cannot bear to let any opportunity of gain escape them, and 
frantically rush at every gap and breach in the walls of 



126 UNTO THIS LAST. 

Fortune, raging to be rich, and affronting, with impatient 
covetousness, every risk of ruin ; while the men prefer three 
days of violent labor, and three days of drunkenness, to six 
days of moderate work and wise rest. There is no way in 
which a principal, who really desires to help his workmen, 
may do it more effectually than by checking these disorderly 
habits both in himself and them ; keeping his own business 
operations on a scale which will enable him to pursue them 
securely, not yielding to temptations of precarious gain ; 
and, at the same time, leading his workmen into regular 
habits of labor and life, either by inducing them rather to 
take low wages in the form of a fixed salary, than high 
wages, subject to the chance of their being thrown out of 
work ; or if this be impossible, by discouraging the system 
of violent exertion for nominally high day wages, and lead- 
ing the men to take lower pay for more regular labor. 

In effecting any radical changes of this kind, doubtless 
there would be great inconvenience and loss incurred by all 
the originators of movement. That which can be done with 
perfect convenience and without loss, is not always the thing 
that most needs to be done, or which we are most im- 
peratively required to do. 

I have already alluded to the difference Hitherto existing 
between regiments of men associated for purposes of vio- 
lence, and for purposes of manufacture ; in that the former 
appear capable of self-sacrifice ■ — the latter, not ; which 
singular fact is the real reason of the general lowness of 
estimate in which the profession of commerce is held, as 
compared with that of arms. Philosophically, it does not, 
at first sight, appear reasonable (many writers have endeav- 
ored to prove it unreasonable) that a peaceable and rational 
person, whose trade is buying and selling, should be held in 
less honor than an unpeaceable and often irrational person, 
whose trade is slaying. Nevertheless, the consent of man- 



THE ROOTS OF HONOR. \2"J 

kind has always, in spite of the philosophers, given pre- 
cedence to the soldier. 

And this is right. 

For the soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is not slay- 
ing, but being slain. This, without well knowing its own 
meaning, the world honors it for. A bravo's trade is slay- 
ing : but the world has never respected bravos more than 

merchants : the reason it honors the soldier is, because he 

« 

holds his life at the service of the State. Reckless he may 
be — fond of pleasure or of adventure — all kinds of by- 
motives and mean impulses may have determined the 
choice of his profession, and may affect (to all appearance 
exclusively) his daily conduct in it ; but our estimate of him 
is based on this ultimate fact — of which we are well assured 
— that, put him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures 
of the world behind him, and only death and his duty in 
front of him, he will keep his face to the front ; and he 
knows that this choice may be put to him at any moment, 
and has beforehand taken his part — virtually takes such 
part continually — does, in reality, die daily. 

Xot less in the respect we pay to the lawyer and phy- 
sician, founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice. Whatever 
the learning or acuteness of a great lawyer, our chief respect 
for him depends on our belief that, set in a judge's seat, he 
will strive to judge justly, come of it what may. Could we 
suppose that he would take bribes, and use his acuteness 
and legal knowledge to give plausibility to iniquitous de- 
cisions, no degree of intellect would win for him our respect. 
Nothing will win it, short of our tacit conviction, that in all 
important acts of his life justice is first with him ; his own 
interest, second. 

In the case of a physician, the ground of the honor we 
render him is clearer still. Whatever his science, we should 
shrink from him in horror if we found him regard his patients 



128 UNTO THIS LAST. 

merely as subjects to experiment upon ; much more, if we 
found that, receiving bribes from persons interested in their 
deaths, he was using his best skill to give poison in the 
mask of medicine. 

Finally, the principle holds with utmost clearness as it 
respects clergymen. No goodness of disposition will excuse 
want of science in a physician or of shrewdness in an advo- 
cate; but a clergyman, even though his power of intellect be 
small, is respected on the presumed ground of his unselfish- 
ness and serviceableness. 

Now, there can be no question but that the tact, foresight, 
decision, and other mental powers, required for the success- 
ful management of a large mercantile concern, if not such 
as could be compared with those of a great lawyer, general, 
or divine, would at least match the general conditions of 
mind required in the subordinate officers of a ship, or of a 
regiment, or in the curate of a country parish. If, therefore, 
all the efficient members of the so-called liberal professions 
are still, somehow, in public estimate of honor, preferred 
before the head of a commercial firm, the reason must lie 
deeper than in the measurement of their several powers 
of mind. 

And the essential reason for such preference will be found 
to lie in the fact that the merchant is presumed to act always 
selfishly. His work may be very necessary to the commu- 
nity; but the motive of it is understood to be wholly personal. 
The merchant's first object in all his dealings must be (the 
public believe) to get as much for himself, and leave as 
little to his neighbor (or customer) as possible. Enforcing 
this upon him, by political statute, as the necessary princi- 
ple of his action ; recommending it to him on all occasions, 
and themselves reciprocally adopting it; proclaiming vocifer- 
ously, for law of the universe, that a buyer's function is to 
cheapen, and a seller's to cheat, — the public, nevertheless, 



TIIF. ROOTS OF HONOR. I 20. 

involuntarily condemn the man of commerce for his compli- 
ance with their own statement, and stamp him forever as 
belonging to an inferior grade of human personality. 

This they will find, eventually, they must give up doing. 
They must not cease to condemn selfishness; but they will 
have to discover a kind of commerce which is not exclusively 
selfish. Or, rather, they will have to discover that there 
never was, or can be. any other kind of commerce ; that this 
which they have called commerce was not commerce at all, 
but cozening; and that a true merchant differs as much from 
a merchant, according to laws of modern political economy, 
as the hero of the Excursion from Autolycus. They will 
find that commerce is an occupation which gentlemen will 
every day see more need to engage in, rather than in the 
businesses of talking to men, or slaying them ; that, in true 
commerce, as in true preaching, or true fighting, it is neces- 
sary to admit the idea of occasional voluntary loss ; — that 
sixpences have to be lost, as well as lives, under a sense of 
duty ; that the market may have its martyrdoms as well as 
the pulpit ; and trade its heroisms, as well as war. 

May have — in the final issue, must have — and only has 
not had yet, because men of heroic temper have always been 
misguided in their youth into other fields, not recognizing 
what is in our days, perhaps, the most important of all 
fields ; so that, while many a zealous person loses his life in 
trying to teach the form of a gospel, very few will lose a 
hundred pounds in showing the practice of one. 

The fact is, that people never have had clearly explained 
to them the true functions of a merchant with respect to 
other people. I should like the reader to be very clear 
about this. 

Five great intellectual professions, relating to daily neces- 
sities of life, have hitherto existed — three exist necessarily, 
in every civilized nation: — 



I30 UNTO THIS LAST. 

The Soldier's profession is to defend it. 

The Pastor's, to teach it. 

The Physician's, to keep it in health. 

The Lawyer's, to enforce justice in it. 

The Merchant's, to provide for it. 

And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to die for it. 

" On due occasion," namely : — 

The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle. 

The Physician, rather than leave his post in plague. 

The Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood. 

The Lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice. 

The Merchant — What is his "due occasion " of death ? 

It is the main question for the merchant, as for all of us. 
.For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does 
not know how to live. 

Observe, the merchant's function (or manufacturer's, for 
in the broad sense in which it is here used the word must be 
understood to include both) is to provide for the nation. It 
is no more his function to get profit for himself out of that 
provision than it is a clergyman's function to get his stipend. 
The stipend is a due and necessary adjunct, but not the 
object, of his life, if he be a true clergyman, any more 
than his fee (or honorarium) is the object of life to a true 
physician. Neither is his fee the object of life to a true 
merchant. All three, if true men, have a work to be done 
irrespective of fee — to be done even at any cost, or for quite 
the contrary of fee; the pastor's function being to teach, the 
physician's to heal, and the merchant's, as I have said, to 
provide. That is to say, he has to understand to their very 
root the qualities of the thing he deals in, and the means of 
obtaining or producing it ; and he has to apply all his 
sagacity and energy to the producing or obtaining it in 
perfect state, and distributing it at the cheapest possible 
price where it is most needed. 



THE ROOTS OF HONOR. T 5 I 

And because the production or obtaining of any commod- 
ity involves necessarily the agency of many lives and hands, 
the merchant becomes in the course of his business the 
master and governor of large masses of men in a more direct, 
though less confessed way, than a military officer or pastor ; 
so that on him falls, in great part, the responsibility for the 
kind of life they lead ; and it becomes his duty, not only to 
be always considering how to produce what he sells in the 
purest and cheapest forms, but how to make the various 
employments involved in the production, or transference of 
it, most beneficial to the men employed. 

And as into these two functions, requiring for their right 
exercise the highest intelligence, as well as patience, kind- 
ness, and tact, the merchant is bound to put all his energy, 
so for their just discharge he is bound, as soldier or physi- 
cian "' bound, to give up, if need be, his life, in such way as 
may be demanded of him. Two main points he has in his 
providing function to maintain : first, his engagements (faith- 
fulness to engagements being the real root of all possibilities 
in commerce); and, secondly, the perfectness and purity of 
the thing provided; so that, rather than fail in any engage- 
ment, or consent to any deterioration, adulteration, or unjust 
and exorbitant price of that which he provides, he is bound 
to meet fearlessly any form of distress, poverty, or labor, 
which may, through maintenance of these points, come 
upon him. 

Again : in his office as governor of the men employed by 
him, the merchant or manufacturer is invested with a dis- 
tinctly paternal authority and responsibility. In most cases, 
a youth entering a commercial establishment is withdrawn 
altogether from home influence ; his master must become 
his father, else he has, for practical and constant help, no 
father at hand ; in all cases the master's authority, together 
with the general tone and atmosphere of his business, and 



132 UNTO THIS LAST. 

the character of the men with whom the youth is compelled 
in the course of it to associate, have more immediate and 
pressing weight than the home influence, and will usually 
neutralize it either for good or evil ; so that the only means 
which the master has of doing justice to the men employed 
by him is to ask himself sternly whether he is dealing with 
such subordinate as he would with his own son, if compelled 
by circumstances to take such a position. 

Supposing the captain of a frigate saw it right, or were 
by any chance obliged, to place his own son in the position 
of a common sailor ; as he would then treat his son, he is 
bound always to treat every one of the men under him. 
So, also, supposing the master of a manufactory saw it 
right, or were by any chance obliged, to place his own son 
in the position of an ordinary workman ; as he would then 
treat his son, he is bound always to treat every one of his 
men. This is the only effective, true, or practical Rule 
which can be given on this point of political economy. 

And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the last man 
to leave his ship in case of wreck, and to share his last 
crust with the sailors in case of famine, so the manufacturer, 
in any commercial crisis dr distress, is bound to take the 
suffering of it with his men, and even to take more of it for 
himself than he allows his men to feel ; as a father would 
in a famine, shipwreck, or battle, sacrifice himself for his 
son. 

All which sounds very strange ; the only real strangeness 
in the matter being, nevertheless, that it should so sound. 
For all this is true, and that not partially nor theoretically, 
but everlastingly and practically; all other doctrine than 
this respecting matters political being false in premises, 
absurd in deduction, and impossible in practice, consistently 
with any progressive state of national life ; all the life 
which we now possess as a nation showing itself in the 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 133 

resolute denial and scorn, by a few strong minds and faith- 
ful hearts, of the economic principles taught to our multi- 
tudes, which principles, so far as accepted, lead straight to 
national destruction. Respecting the modes and forms of 
destruction to which they lead, and, on the other hand, 
respecting the farther practical working of true polity, I hope 
to reason further in a following paper. 



ESSAY II. 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 



The answer which would be made by any ordinary polit- 
ical economist to the statements contained in the preceding 
paper, is in few words as follows : — 

" It is indeed true that certain advantages of a general 
nature may be obtained by the development of social affec- 
tions. But political economists never professed, nor pro- 
fess, to take advantages of a general nature into considera- 
tion. Our science is simply the science of getting rich. 
So far from being a fallacious or visionary one, it is found 
by experience to be practically effective. Persons who fol- 
low its precepts do actually become rich, and persons who 
disobey them become poor. Every capitalist of Europe has 
acquired his fortune by following the known laws of our 
science, and increases his capital daily by an adherence to 
them. It is vain to bring forward tricks of logic, against 
the force of accomplished facts. Every man of business 
knows by experience how money is made, and how it is lost." 

Pardon me. Men of business do indeed know how they 
themselves made their money, or how, on occasion, they lost 
it. Playing a long-practiced game, they are familiar with 



134 UNTO THIS LAST. 

the chances of its cards, and can rightly explain their losses 
and gains. But they neither know who keeps the bank of 
the gambling house, nor what other games may be played 
with the same cards, nor what other losses and gains, far 
away among the dark streets, are essentially, though invisi- 
bly, dependent on theirs in the lighted rooms. They have 
learned a few, and only a few, of the laws of mercantile 
economy ; but not one of those of political economy. 

Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe 
that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word 
" rich." At least if they know, they do not in their reason- 
ings allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying 
its opposite "poor" as positively as the word "north" 
implies its opposite " south." Men nearly always speak and 
write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by 
following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. 
Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting 
only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force 
of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on 
the default of a guinea in your neighbor's pocket. If he 
did not want it, it would be of no use to you ; the degree 
of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or 
desire he has for it, — and the art of making yourself rich, 
in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is, therefore, 
equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbor 
poor. 

I would not contend in this matter (and rarely in any 
matter), for the acceptance of terms. But I wish the reader 
clearly and deeply to understand the difference between the 
two economies, to which the terms "Political" and "Mer- 
cantile " might not unadvisably be attached. 

Political economy (the economy of a State, or of citizens) 
consists simply in the production, preservation, and distribu- 
tion, at fittest time and place, of useful or pleasurable 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 135 

things. The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time ; the 
shipwright who drives his bolts well home in sound wood ; 
the builder who lays good bricks in well-tempered mortar ; 
the housewife who takes care of her furniture in the parlor, 
and guards against all waste in her kitchen ; and the singer 
who rightly disciplines, and never overstrains her voice : 
are all political economists in the true and final sense ; 
adding continually to the riches and well-being of the 
nation to which they belong. 

But mercantile economy, the economy of "merces" or of 
" pay, 1 ' signifies the accumulation, in the hands of indi- 
viduals, of legal or moral claim upon, or power over, the 
labor of others ; every such claim implying precisely as 
much poverty or debt on one side, as it implies riches or 
right on the other. 

It does not, therefore, necessarily involve an addition 
to the actual property, or well-being, of the State in which 
it exists. But since this commercial wealth, or power over 
labor, is nearly always convertible at once into real property, 
while real property is not always convertible at once into 
power over labor, the idea of riches among active men in 
civilized nations generally refers to commercial wealth ; and 
in estimating their possessions, they rather calculate the 
value of their horses and fields by the number of guineas 
they could get for them, than the value of their guineas by 
the number of horses and fields they could buy with them. 

There is, however, another reason for this habit of mind; 
namely, that an accumulation of real property is of little 
use to its owner, unless, together with it, he has commercial 
power over labor. Thus, suppose any person to be put in 
possession of a large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds 
of gold in its gravel, countless herds of cattle in its 
pastures ; houses, and gardens, and storehouses full of 
Useful stores ; but suppose, after all, that he could get no 



I36 UNTO THIS LAST. 

servants. In order that he may be able to have servants, 
some one in the neighborhood must be poor, and in want of 
his gold ■ — or his corn. Assume that no one is in want of 
either, and that no servants are to be had. He must, 
therefore, bake his own bread, make his own clothes, plough 
his own ground, and shepherd his own flocks. His gold 
will be as useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on his 
estate. His stores must rot, for he cannot consume them. 
He can eat no more than another man could eat, and wear 
no more than another man could wear. He must lead a 
life of severe and common labor to procure even ordinary 
comforts ; he will be ultimately unable to keep either houses 
in repair, or fields in cultivation ; and forced to content 
himself with a poor man's portion of cottage and garden, in 
the midst of a desert of waste land, trampled by wild cattle, 
and encumbered by ruins of palaces, which he will hardly 
mock at himself by calling "his own." 

The most covetous of mankind would, with small exulta- 
tion, I presume, accept riches of this kind on these terms. 
What is really desired, under the name of riches, is, essen- 
tially, power over men ; in its simplest sense, the power 
of obtaining for our own advantage the labor of servant, 
tradesman, and artist ; in wider sense, authority of direct- 
ing large masses of the nation to various ends (good, trivial, 
or hurtful, according to the mind of the rich person). And 
this power of wealth of course is greater or less in direct 
proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is 
exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of 
persons who are as rich as ourselves, and who are ready 
to give the same price for an article of which the supply 
is limited. If the musician is poor, he will sing for small 
pay, as long as there is only one person who can pay him ; 
but if there be two or three, he will sing for the one who 
offers him most. And thus the power of the riches of the 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 137 

patron (always imperfect and doubtful, as we shall see 
presently, even when most authoritative) depends first on 
the poverty of the artist, and then on the limitation of the 
number of equally wealthy persons, who also want seats at 
the concert. So that, as above stated, the art of becoming 
"rich," in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally 
the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also 
of contriving that our neighbors shall have less. In accu- 
rate terms, it is " the art of establishing the maximum 
inequality in our own favor." 

Now the establishment of such inequality cannot be 
shown in the abstract to be either advantageous or dis- 
advantageous to the body of the nation. The rash and 
absurd assumption that such inequalities are necessarily 
advantageous, lies at the root of most of the popular 
fallacies on the subject of political economy. For the 
eternal and inevitable law in this matter is, that the bene- 
ficialness of the inequality depends, first, on the methods 
by "which it was accomplished, and, secondly, on the pur- 
poses to which it is applied. Inequalities of wealth, 
unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation in 
which they exist during their establishment ; and, unjustly 
directed, injure it yet more during their existence. But 
inequalities of wealth justly established, benefit the nation 
in the course of their establishment ; and nobly used, aid 
it yet more by their existence. That is to say, among 
every active and well-governed people, the various strength 
of individuals, tested by full exertion and specially applied 
to various needs, issues in unequal, but harmonious results, 
receiving reward or authority according to its class and 
service ; 1 while in the inactive or ill-governed nation, the 

1 I have been naturally asked several times, with respect to the 
sentence in the first of these papers, " the bad workmen unemployed," 
" But what are you to do with your bad unemployed workmen ? " Well, 



I38 UNTO THIS LAST. 

gradations of decay and the victories of treason work out 
also their own rugged system of subjection and success ; 
and substitute, for the melodious inequalities of concurrent 
power, the iniquitous dominances and depressions of guilt 
and misfortune. 

Thus the circulation of wealth in a nation resembles that 
of the blood in the natural body. There is one quickness 
of the current which comes of cheerful emotion or whole- 
some exercise ; and another which comes of shame or of 
fever. There is a flush of the body which is full of warmth 
and life ; and another which will pass into putrefaction. 

it seems to me the question might have occurred to you before. Your 
housemaid's place is vacant — you give twenty pounds a year — two 
girls come for it, one neatly dressed, the other dirtily; one with good 
recommendations, the other with none. You do not, under these 
circumstances, usually ask the dirty one if she will come for fifteen 
pounds, or twelve ; and, on her consenting, take her instead of the 
well-recommended one. Still less do you try to beat both down by 
making them bid against each other, till you can hire both, one at 
twelve pounds a year, and the other at eight. You simply take the one 
fittest for the place, and send away the other, not perhaps concerning 
yourself quite as much as you should with the question which you now 
impatiently put to me, " What is to become of her ? " For, all that I 
advise you to do, is to deal with workmen as with servants ; and verily 
the question is of weight : " Your bad workman, idler, and rogue — 
what are you to do with him ? " 

We will consider of this presently : remember that the administration 
of a complete system of national commerce and industry cannot be 
explained in full detail within the space of twelve pages. Meantime, 
consider whether, there being confessedly some difficulty in dealing with 
rogues and idlers, it may not be advisable to produce as few of them as 
possible. If you examine into the history of rogues, you will find they 
are as truly manufactured articles as anything else, and it is just because 
our present system of political economy gives so large a stimulus to that 
manufacture that you may know it to be a false one. We had better 
seek for a system which will develop honest men, than for one which 
will deal cunningly with vagabonds. Let us reform our schools, and 
we shall find little reform needed in our prisons. 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 1 39 

The analogy will hold, down even to minute particulars. 
For as diseased local determination of the blood involves 
depression of the general health of the system, all morbid 
local action of riches will be found ultimately to involve a 
weakening of the resources of the body politic. 

The mode in which this is produced may be at once under- 
stood by examining one or two instances of the development 
of wealth in the simplest possible circumstances. 

Suppose two* sailors cast away on an uninhabited coast, 
and obliged to maintain themselves there by their own 
labor for a series of years. 

If they both kept their health, and worked steadily, and 
in amity with each other, they might build themselves a 
convenient house, and in time come to possess a certain 
quantity of cultivated land, together with various stores 
laid up for future use. All these things would be real 
riches or property ; and supposing the men both to have 
worked equally hard, they would each have right to equal 
share or use of it. Their political economy would consist 
merely in careful preservation and just division of these 
possessions. Perhaps, however, after some time, one or 
other might be dissatisfied with the results of their common 
farming ; and they might in consequence agree to divide 
the land they had brought under the spade into equal 
shares, so that each might thenceforward work in his own 
field and live by it. Suppose that after this arrangement 
had been made, one of them were to fall ill, and be unable 
to work on his land at a critical time — say of sowing or 
harvest. 

He would naturally ask the other to sow or reap for him. 

Then his companion might say, with perfect justice, " I 
will do this additional work for you ; but if I do it, you 
must promise to do as much for me at another time. I 
will count how many hours I spend on your ground, and 



I4O UNTO THIS LAST. 

you shall give me a written promise to work for the same 
number of hours on mine, whenever I need your help, and 
you are able to give it." 

- Suppose the disabled man's sickness to continue, and that 
under various circumstances, for several years, requiring the 
help of the other, he on each occasion gave a written pledge 
to work, as soon as he was able, at his companion's orders, 
for the same number of hours which the other had given up 
to him. What will the positions of the two men be when 
the invalid is able to resume work ? 

Considered as a " Polis," or state, they will be poorer than 
they would have been otherwise : poorer by the withdrawal 
of what the sick man's labor would have produced in the 
interval. His friend may perhaps have toiled with an 
energy quickened by the enlarged need, but, in the end, 
his own land and property must have suffered by the with- 
drawal of so much of his time and thought from them ; 
and the united property of the two men will be certainly 
less than it would have been if both had remained in health 
and activity. 

But the relations in which they stand to each other are 
also widely altered. The sick man has not only pledged his 
labor for some years, but will probably have exhausted his 
own share of the accumulated stores, and' will be in conse- 
quence for some time dependent on the other for food, which 
he can only "pay" or reward him for by yet more deeply 
pledging his own labor. 

Supposing the "written promises to be held entirely valid 
(among civilized nations their validity is secured by legal 
measures *), the person who had hitherto worked for both 

1 The disputes which exist respecting the real nature of money arise 
more from the disputants examining its functions on different sides, 
than from any real dissent in their opinions. All money, properly so 
called, is an acknowledgment of debt; but as such, it may either be 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. I4I 

might now, if he chose, rest altogether, and pass his time in 
idleness, not only forcing his companion to redeem all the 
engagements he had already entered into, but exacting from 
him pledges for further labor, to an arbitrary amount, for 
what food he had to advance to him. 

There might not, from first to last, be the least illegality 
(in the ordinary sense of the word) in the arrangement ; 
but if a stranger arrived on the coast at this advanced 
epoch of their political economy, he would find one man 
commercially Rich ; the other commercially Poor. He 
would see, perhaps with no small surprise, one passing his 
days in idleness ; the other laboring for both, and living 
sparely, in the hope of recovering his independence, at 
some distant period. 

This is, of course, an example of one only out of many 
ways in which inequality of possession may be established 
between different persons, giving rise to mercantile forms of 
Riches and Poverty. In the instance before us, one of the 
men might from the first have deliberately chosen to be idle, 
and to put his life in pawn for present ease ; or he might 
have mismanaged his land, and been compelled to have 
recourse to his neighbor for food and help, pledging his 
future labor for it. But what I want the reader to note 
especially is the fact, common to a large number of typical 
cases of this kind, that the establishment of the mercantile 
wealth which consists in a claim upon labor, signifies a 

considered to represent the labor and property of the creditor, or the 
idleness and penury of the debtor. The intricacy of the question has 
been much increased by the (hitherto necessary) use of marketable 
commodities, such as gold, silver, salt, shells, etc., to give intrinsic value 
or security to currency ; but the final and best definition of money is 
that it is a documentary promise ratified and guaranteed by the nation 
to give or find a certain quantity of labor on demand. A man's labor 
for a day is a better standard of value than a measure of any produce, 
because no produce ever maintains a consistent rate of productibility. 



142 UNTO THIS LAST. 

political diminution of the real wealth which consists in 
substantial possessions. 

Take another example, more consistent with the ordinary 
course of affairs of trade. Suppose that three men, instead 
of two, formed the little isolated republic, and found them- 
selves obliged to separate in order to farm different pieces 
of land at some distance from each other along the coast ; 
each estate furnishing a distinct kind of produce, and each 
more or less in need of the material raised on the other. 
Suppose that the third man, in order to save the time of all 
three, undertakes simply to superintend the transference 
of commodities from one farm to the other ; on condition 
of receiving some sufficiently remunerative share of every 
parcel of goods conveyed, or of some other parcel received 
in exchange for it. 

If this carrier or messenger always brings to each estate, 
from the other, what is chiefly wanted, at the right time, 
the operations of the two farmers will go on prosperously, 
and the largest possible result in produce, or wealth, will be 
attained by the little community. But suppose no inter- 
course between the land owners is possible, except through 
the traveling agent ; and that, after a time, this agent, 
watching the course of each man's agriculture, keeps back 
the articles with which he has been entrusted until there 
comes a period of extreme necessity for them, on one side 
or other, and then exacts in exchange for them all that the 
distressed farmer can spare of other kinds of produce ; it is 
easy to see that by ingeniously watching his opportunities, 
he might possess himself regularly of the greater part of the 
superfluous produce of the two estates, and at last, in some 
year of severest trial or scarcity, purchase both for himself, 
and maintain the former proprietors thenceforward as his 
laborers or his servants. 

This would be a case of commercial wealth acquired on 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. I43 

the exactest principles of modern political economy. But 
more distinctly even than in the former instance, it is mani- 
fest in this that the wealth of the State, or of the three men 
considered as a society, is collectively less than it would 
have been had the merchant been content with juster profit. 
The operations of the two agriculturists have been cramped 
to the utmost ; and the continual limitations of the supply 
of things they wanted at critical times, together with the 
failure of courage consequent on the prolongation of a 
struggle for mere existence, without any sense of permanent 
gain, must have seriously diminished the effective results 
of their labor ; and the stores finally accumulated in the 
merchant's hands will not in any wise be of equivalent value 
to those which, had his dealings been honest, would have 
filled at once the granaries of the farmers and his own. 

The whole question, therefore, respecting not only the 
advantage, but even the quantity, of national wealth, resolves 
itself finally into one of abstract justice. It is impossible 
to conclude, of any given mass of acquired wealth, merely 
by the fact of its existence, whether it signifies good or evil 
to the nation in the midst of which it exists. Its real value 
depends on the moral sign attached to it, just as sternly as 
that of a mathematical quantity depends on the algebraical 
sign attached to it. Any given accumulation of commercial 
wealth may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful 
industries, progressive energies, and productive ingenuities ; 
or, on the other, it may be indicative of mortal luxury, 
merciless tyranny, ruinous chicane. Some treasures are 
heavy with human tears, as an ill-stored harvest with 
untimely rain ; and some gold is brighter in sunshine than 
it is in substance. 

' And these are not, observe, merely moral or pathetic 
attributes of riches, which the seeker of riches may, if he 
chooses, despise ; they are literally and sternly, material 



144 UNTO THIS LAST. 

attributes of riches, depreciating or exalting, incalculably, 
the monetary signification of the sum in question. One 
mass of money is the outcome of action which has created, 

— another of action which has annihilated, ■ — ten times as 
much in the gathering of it ; such and such strong hands 
have been paralyzed, as if they had been numbed by night- 
shade : so many strong men's courage broken, so many 
productive operations hindered ; this and the other false 
direction given to labor, and lying image of prosperity set 
up, on Dura plains dug into seven-times-heated furnaces. 
That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the 
gilded index of far-reaching ruin ; a wrecker's handful of 
coin gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an 
argosy ; a camp-follower's bundle of rags unwrapped from 
the breasts of goodly soldiers dead ; the purchase-pieces of 
potter's fields, wherein shall be buried together the citizen 
and the stranger. 

And therefore, the idea that directions can be given for 
the gaining of wealth, irrespectively of the consideration of 
its moral sources, or that any general and technical law of 
purchase and gain can be set down for national practice, 
is perhaps the most insolently futile of all that ever beguiled 
men through their vices. So far as I know, there is not in 
history record of anything so disgraceful to the human 
intellect as the modern idea that the commercial text, " Buy 
in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest," represents, 
or under any circumstances could represent, an available 
principle of national economy. Buy in the cheapest market ? 

— yes ; but what made your market cheap ? Charcoal may 
be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks 
may be cheap in your streets after an earthquake ; but fire 
and earthquake may not therefore be national benefits. 
Sell in the dearest ? — yes, truly ; but what made your 
market dear ? You sold your bread well to-day ; was it to 



THE VEIN'S OF WEALTH. 145 

a dying man who gave his last coin for it, and will 
never need bread more, or to a rich man who to-morrow 
will buy your farm over your head ; or to a soldier on 
his way to pillage the bank in which you have put your 
fortune ? 

None of these things you can know. One thing only you 
can know, namely, whether this dealing of yours is a just 
and faithful one, which is all you need concern yourself 
about respecting it ; sure thus to have done your own part 
in bringing about ultimately in the world a state of things 
which will not issue in pillage or in death. And thus every 
question concerning these things merges itself ultimately 
in the great question of justice, which, the ground being 
thus far cleared for it, I will enter upon in the next paper, 
leaving only, in this, three final points for the reader's 
consideration. 

It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of 
money consists in its having power over human beings ; 
that, without this power, large material possessions are 
useless, and to any person possessing such power, com- 
paratively unnecessary. But power over human beings is 
attainable by other means than by money. As I said a few 
pages back, the money power is always imperfect and doubt- 
ful ; there are many things which cannot be retained by it. 
Many joys may be given to men which cannot be bought 
for gold, and many fidelities found in them which cannot be 
rewarded with it. 

Trite enough, — the reader thinks. Yes : but it is not so 
trite, — I wish it were, — that in this moral power, quite 
inscrutable and immeasurable though it be, there is a mone- 
tary value just as real as that represented by more ponderous 
currencies. A man's hand may be full of invisible gold, and 
the wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than another's 
with a shower of bullion. This invisible gold, also, does 



I46 UNTO THIS LAST. 

not necessarily diminish in spending. Political economists 
will do well some day to take heed of it, though they cannot 
take measure. 

But farther. Since the essence of wealth consists in its 
authority over men, if the apparent or nominal wealth fail in 
this power, it fails in essence ; in fact, ceases to be wealth at 
all. It does not appear lately in England, that our authority 
over men is absolute. The servants show some disposition 
to rush riotously upstairs, under an impression that their 
wages are not regularly paid. We should augur ill of any 
gentleman's property to whom this happened every other 
day in his drawing-room. 

So also, the power of our wealth seems limited as respects 
the comfort of the servants, no less than their quietude. 
The persons in the kitchen appear to be ill-dressed, squalid, 
half-starved. One cannot help imagining that the riches of 
the establishment must be of a very theoretical and docu- 
mentary character. 

Finally. Since the essence of wealth consists in power 
over men, will it not follow that the nobler and the more in 
number the persons are over whom it has power, the greater 
the wealth ? Perhaps it may even appear after some con- 
sideration, that the persons themselves are the wealth- — • 
that these pieces of gold with which we are in the habit of 
guiding them, are, in fact, nothing more than a kind of 
Byzantine harness or trappings, very glittering and beauti- 
ful in barbaric sight, wherewith we bridle the creatures ; but 
that if these same living creatures could be guided without 
the fretting and jingling of the Byzants in their mouths and 
ears, they might themselves be more valuable than their 
bridles. In fact, it may be discovered that the true veins of 
wealth are purple — and not in Rock, but in Flesh — perhaps 
even that the final outcome and consummation of all wealth 
is in the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright- 



QUI JUDICATIS TERRA M. 1 47 

eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures. Our modern 
wealth, I think, has rather a tendency the other way ; — 
most political economists appearing to consider multitudes 
of human creatures not conducive to wealth, or at best con- 
ducive to it only by remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow- 
chested state of being. 

Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, 
which I leave to the reader's pondering, whether, among 
national manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality may 
not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one ? Nay, 
in some far-away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even 
imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive 
wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first 
arose ; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant 
of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, 
and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian 
mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of 
a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying, — 

" These are my Jewels." 



ESSAY III. 

QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 

Some centuries before the Christian era, a Jew merchant 
largely engaged in business on the Gold Coast, and reported 
to have made one of the largest fortunes of his time (held 
also in repute for much practical sagacity), left among his 
ledgers some general maxims concerning wealth, which have 
been preserved, strangely enough, even to our own days. 
They were held in considerable respect by the most active 
traders of the middle ages, especially by the Venetians, who 



I48 UNTO THIS LAST. 

even went so far in their admiration as to place a statue of 
the old Jew on the angle of one of their principal public 
buildings. Of late years these writings have fallen into 
disrepute, being opposed in every particular to the spirit 
of modern commerce. Nevertheless I shall reproduce a 
passage or two from them here, partly because they may 
interest the reader by their novelty ; and chiefly because 
they will show him that it is possible for a very practical and 
acquisitive tradesman to hold, through a not unsuccessful 
career, that principle of distinction between well-gotten and 
ill-gotten wealth, which, partially insisted on in my last paper, 
it must be our work more completely to examine in this. 

He says, for instance, in one place: "The getting of 
treasure by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro 
of them that seek death " : adding in another, with the 
same meaning (he has a curious way of doubling his say- 
ings): "Treasures of wickedness profit nothing; but justice 
delivers from death." 1 Both these passages are notable for 
their assertion of death as the only real issue and sum of 
attainment by any unjust scheme of wealth. If we read, 
instead of "lying tongue," "lying label, title, pretense, or 
advertisement," we shall more clearly perceive the bearing 
of the words on modern business. The seeking of death is 
a grand expression of the true course of men's toil in such 
business. We usually speak as if death pursued us, and 
we fled from him ; but that is only so in rare instances. 
Ordinarily, he masks himself — makes himself beautiful — 
all-glorious ; not like the King's daughter, all-glorious with- 
in, but outwardly : his clothing of wrought gold. We pursue 
him frantically all our days, he flying or hiding from us. 
Our crowning success at three-score and ten is utterly and 
perfectly to seize, and hold him in his eternal integrity — 
robes, ashes, and sting. 2 

1 Proverbs x. 2. 2 1 Corinthians xv. 56. 



QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. I49 

Again : the merchant says, " He that oppresseth the poor 
to increase his riches, shall surely come to want." 1 And 
again, more strongly : " Rob not the poor because he is 
poor ; neither oppress the afflicted in the place of business. 
For God shall spoil the soul of those that spoiled them." 2 

This "robbing the poor because he is podr," is especially 
the mercantile form of theft, consisting in taking advantage 
of a man's necessities in order to obtain his labor or 
property at a reduced price. The ordinary highwayman's 
opposite form of robbery — of the rich, because he is rich 
— does not appear to occur so often to the old merchant's 
mind ; probably because, being less profitable and more 
dangerous than the robbery of the poor, it is rarely practiced 
by persons of discretion. 

But the two most remarkable passages in their deep 
general significance are the following : — 

" The rich and the poor have met. God is their maker." 3 
"The rich and the poor have met. God is their light." 4 
They " have met " : more literally, have stood in each 
other's way (obviaverimf). That is to say, as long as the 
world lasts, the action and counteraction of wealth and 
poverty, the meeting, face to face, of rich and poor, is just 
as appointed and necessary a law of that world as the flow 
of stream to sea, or the interchange of power among the 
electric clouds : — " God is their maker." But, also, this 
action may be either gentle and just, or convulsive and 
destructive it may be by rage of devouring flood, or by lapse 
of serviceable wave ; — in blackness of thunderstroke, or 
continual force of vital fire, soft, and shapable into love- 
syllables from far away. And which of these it shall be 
depends on both rich and poor knowing that God is their 
light; that in the mystery of human life, there is no other 

1 Proverbs xxii. 16. 3 Proverbs xxii. 2. 

2 Proverbs xxii. 22, 23. 4 Proverbs xxix. 13. 



I 50 UNTO THIS LAST. 

light than this by which they can see each other's faces, and 
live ; — light, which is called in another of the books among 
which the merchant's maxims have been preserved, the "sun 
of justice," 1 of which it is promised that it shall rise at 
last with " healing " (health-giving or helping, making whole 
or setting at one) in its wings. For truly this healing is 
only possible by means of justice ; no love, no faith, no 
hope will do it ; men will be unwisely fond — vainly faithful, 
unless primarily they are just ; and the mistake of the best 
men through generation after generation, has been that 
great one of thinking to help the poor by almsgiving, and 
by preaching of patience or of hope, and by every other 
means, emollient or consolatory, except the one thing which 
God orders for them, justice. But this justice, with its 
accompanying holiness or helpfulness, being even by the 
best men denied in its trial time, is by the mass of men 
hated wherever it appears : so that, when the choice was 
one day fairly put to them, they denied the Helpful One and 
the Just, 2 and desired a murderer, sedition-raiser, and robber, 
to be granted to them ; — the murderer instead of the Lord 

1 More accurately, Sun of Justness ; but, instead of the harsh word 
" Justness," the old English " Righteousness " being commonly em- 
ployed, has, by getting confused with "godliness," or attracting about it 
various vague and broken meanings, prevented most persons from 
receiving the force of the passages in which it occurs. The word 
"righteousness" properly refers to the justice of rule, or right, as 
distinguished from "equity," which refers to the justice of balance. 
More broadly, Righteousness is King's justice ; and Equity, Judge's 
justice ; the King guiding or ruling all, the Judge dividing or discerning 
between opposites (therefore, the double question, " Man, who made me 
a ruler — BucaaTrjs — or a divider — /xepio-TTjs — over you ? "). Thus, with 
respect to the Justice of Choice (selection, the feebler and passive 
justice), we have from lego, — lex, legal, loi, and loyal ; and with respect 
to the Justice of Rule (direction, the stronger and active justice), we 
have from rego, — rex, regal, roi, and royal. 

2 In another place written with the same meaning, "Just, and having 
salvation." 



QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. I 5 I 

of Life, the sedition-raiser instead of the Prince of Peace, 
and the robber instead of the Just Judge of all the world. 1 
I have just spoken of the flowing of streams to the sea 
as a partial image of the action of wealth. In one respect 
it is not a partial, but a perfect image. The popular 
economist thinks himself wise in having discovered that 
wealth, or the forms of property in general, must go where 
they are required ; that where demand is, supply must 
follow. He further declares that this course of demand and 
supply cannot be forbidden by human laws. Precisely in the 
same sense, and with the same certainty, the waters of the 
world go where they are required. Where the land falls, 
the water flows. The course neither of clouds nor rivers 
can be forbidden by human will. But the disposition and 
administration of them can be altered by human forethought. 
Whether the stream shall be a curse or a blessing, depends 
upon man's labor and administrating intelligence. For 
centuries after centuries, great districts of the world, rich 
in soil, and favored in climate, have lain desert under the 
rage of their own rivers ; not only desert, but plague-struck. 
The stream which, rightly directed, would have flowed in 
soft irrigation from field to field — would have purified the 
air, given food to man and beast, and carried their burdens 
for them on its bosom — now overwhelms the plain, and 
poisons the wind ; its breath pestilence, and its work famine. 
In like manner, this wealth " goes where it is required." 
No human laws can withstand its flow. They can only 
guide it : but this, the leading trench and limiting mound 
can do so thoroughly, that it shall become water of life — the 
riches of the hand of wisdom ; 2 or, on the contrary, by leaving 
it to its own lawless flow, they may make it, what it has 
been too often, the last and deadliest of national plagues : 

1 Luke xxiii. 18, 19. 

- " Length of days in her right hand ; in her left, riches and honor." 



152 UNTO THIS LAST. 

water of Marah — the water which feeds the roots of all 
evil. 

The necessity of these laws of distribution or restraint 
is curiously overlooked in the ordinary political economist's 
definition of his own " science." He calls it, shortly, the 
"science of getting rich." But there are many sciences, as 
well as many arts, of getting rich. Poisoning people of 
large estates, was one employed largely in the middle ages ; 
adulteration of food of people of small estates, is one 
employed largely now. The ancient and honorable Highland 
method of blackmail ; the more modern and less honorable 
system of obtaining goods on credit, and the other variously 
improved methods of appropriation — which, in major and 
minor scales of industry, down to the most artistic pocket- 
picking, we owe to recent genius, — all come under the 
general head of sciences, or arts, of getting rich. 

So that it is clear the popular economist, in calling his 
science the science par excellence of getting rich, must 
attach some peculiar ideas of limitation to its character. 
I hope I do not misrepresent him, by assuming that he 
means his science to be the science of " getting rich by 
legal or just means." In this definition, is the word " just," 
or "legal," finally to stand? For it is possible among 
certain nations, or under certain rulers, or by help of 
certain advocates, that proceedings may be legal which are 
by no means just. If, therefore, we leave at last only the 
word " just " in that place of our definition, the insertion of 
this solitary and small word will make a notable difference 
in the grammar of our science. For then it will follow that, 
in order to grow rich scientifically, we must grow rich justly ? 
and, therefore, know what is just ; so that our economy will 
no longer depend merely on prudence, but on jurisprudence 
— and that of divine, not human law. Which prudence is 
indeed of no mean order, holding itself, as it were, high in 



QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 1 53 

the air of heaven, and gazing forever on the light of the 
sun of justice ; hence the souls which have excelled in it, 
are represented by Dante as stars forming in heaven forever 
the figure of the eye of an eagle : they having been in life 
the discerners of light from darkness ; or to the whole 
human race, as the light of the body, which is the eye ; 
while those souls which form the wings of the bird (giving 
power and dominion to justice, "healing in its wings") 
trace also in light the inscription in heaven : " diligite 
justitiam qui judicatis terram." " Ye who judge the 
earth, give " (not, observe, merely love, but) " diligent love 
to justice": the love which seeks diligently, that is to say, 
choosingly, and by preference to all things else. Which 
judging or doing judgment in the earth is, according to 
their capacity and position, required not of judges only, nor 
of rulers only, but of all men : 1 a truth sorrowfully lost 
sight of even by those who are ready enough to apply to 
themselves passages in which Christian men are spoken of 
as called to be " saints " (i.e., to helpful and healing 
functions); and "chosen to be kings" (i.e., to knowing or 
directing functions) ; the true meaning of these titles 
having been long lost through the pretenses of unhelpful 
and unable persons to saintly and kingly character ; also 
through the once popular idea that both the sanctity and 
royalty are to consist in wearing long robes and high 

1 I hear that several of our lawyers have been greatly amused by the 
statement in the first of these papers that a lawyer's function was to do 
justice. I do not intend it for a jest ; nevertheless it will be seen that in 
the above passage neither the determination nor doing of justice are 
contemplated as functions wholly peculiar to the lawyers. Possibly, the 
more our standing armies, whether of soldiers, pastors, or legislators 
(the generic term "pastor" including all teachers, and the generic term 
"lawyer " including makers as well as interpreters of law), can be super- 
seded by the force of national heroism, wisdom, and honesty, the better 
it may be for the nation. 



154 UNTO THIS LAST. 

crowns, instead of in mercy and judgment ; whereas all 
true sanctity is saving power, as all true royalty is ruling 
power ; and injustice is part and parcel of the denial of 
such power, which " makes men as the creeping things, as 
the fishes of the sea, that have no ruler over them." * 

Absolute justice is, indeed, no more attainable than abso- 
lute truth ; but the righteous man is distinguished from the 
unrighteous by his desire and hope of justice, as the true 
man from the false by his desire and hope of truth. And 
though absolute justice be unattainable, as much justice as 
we need for all practical use is attainable by all those who 
make it their aim. 

We have to examine, then, in the subject before us, what 
are the laws of justice respecting payment of labor — no 
small part, these, of the foundations of all jurisprudence. 

I reduced, in my last paper, the idea of money payment to 
its simplest or radical terms. In those terms its nature, and 
the conditions of justice respecting it, can be best ascertained. 

Money payment, as there stated, consists radically in a 
promise to some person working for us, that for the time 
and labor he spends in our service to-day we will give or 
procure equivalent time and labor in his service at any 
future time when he may demand it. 2 

1 It being the privilege of the fishes, as it is of rats and wolves, to 
live by the laws of demand and supply ; but the distinction of humanity, 
to live by those of right. 

2 It might appear at first that the market price of labor expressed such 
an exchange; but this is a fallacy, for the market price is the momentary 
price of the kind of labor required, but the just price is its equivalent 
of the productive labor of mankind. This difference will be analyzed in 
its place. It must be noted, also, that I speak here only of the exchange- 
able value of labor, not of that of commodities. The exchangeable value 
of a commodity is that of the labor required to produce it, multiplied 
into the force of the demand for it. If the value of the labor = x and 
the force of the demand = y, the exchangeable value of the commodity 
is x y, in which if either x = o, or y = o, xy = o. 



QUI JUDICATIS TEKRAM. 1 55 

If we promise to give him less labor than he has given 
us, we underpay him. If we promise to give him more 
labor than he has given us, we overpay him. In practice, 
according to the laws of demand and supply, when two 
men are ready to do the work, and only one man wants to 
have it done, the two men underbid each other for it ; and 
the one who gets it to do, is underpaid. But when two 
men want the work done, and there is only one man ready 
to do it, the two men who want it done overbid each other, 
and the workman is overpaid. 

I will examine these two points of injustice in succession; 
but first I wish the reader to clearly understand the central 
principle, lying between the two, of right or just payment. 

When we ask a service of any man, he may either give 
it us freely, or demand payment for it. Respecting free 
gift of service, there is no question at present, that being 
a matter of affection — not of traffic. But if he demand 
payment for it, and we wish to treat him with absolute 
equity, it is evident that this equity can only consist in 
giving time for time, strength for strength, and skill for 
skill. If a man works an hour for us, and we only promise 
to work half an hour for him in return, we obtain an unjust 
advantage. If, on the contrary, we promise to work an 
hour and a half for him in return, he has an unjust advan- 
tage. The justice consists in absolute exchange ; or, if- 
there be any respect to the stations of the parties, it will 
not be in favor of the employer ; there is certainly no 
equitable reason in a man's being poor, that if he give me 
a pound of bread to-day, I should return him less than a 
pound of bread to-morrow ; or any equitable reason in a 
man's being uneducated, that if he uses a certain quantity 
of skill and knowledge in my service, I should use a less 
quantity of skill and knowledge in his. Perhaps, ultimately, 
it may appear desirable, or, to say the least, gracious, that 



156 UNTO THIS LAST. 

I should give in return somewhat more than I received. 
But at present, we are concerned on the law of justice only, 
which is that of perfect and accurate exchange ; — one cir- 
cumstance only interfering with the simplicity of this radical 
idea of just payment — that inasmuch as labor (rightly 
directed) is fruitful just as seed is, the fruit (or "interest," 
as it is called) of the labor first given, or " advanced," 
ought to be taken into account, and balanced by an addi- 
tional quantity of labor in the subsequent repayment. 
Supposing the repayment to take place at the end of a 
year, or of any other given time, this calculation could be 
approximately made ; but as money (that is to say, cash) 
payment involves no reference to time (it being optional 
with the person paid to spend what he receives at once or 
after any number of years), we can only assume, generally, 
that some slight advantage must in equity be allowed to 
the person who advances the labor, so that the typical 
form of bargain will be : If you give me an hour to-day, I 
will give you an hour and five minutes on demand. If you 
give me a pound of bread to-day, I will give you seventeen 
ounces on demand, and so on. All that it is necessary for 
the reader to note is, that the amount returned is at least in 
equity not to be less than the amount given. 

The abstract idea, then, of just or due wages, as respects 
the laborer, is that they will consist in a sum of money 
which will at any time procure for him at least as much 
labor as he has given, rather more than less. And this 
equity or justice of payment is, observe, wholly independent 
of any reference to the number of men who are willing to do 
the work. I want a horseshoe for my horse. Twenty smiths, 
or twenty thousand smiths, may be ready to forge it ; their 
number does not in one atom's weight affect the question of 
the equitable payment of the one who does forge it. It costs 
him a quarter of an hour of his life, and so much skill and 



JUDICATIS TERRAM. I 57 

strength of arm to make that horseshoe for me. Then at 
some future time 1 am bound in equity to give a quarter of 
an hour, and some minutes more, of my life (or of some 
other person's at my disposal), and also as much strength 
of arm and skill, and a little more, in making or doing what 
the smith may have need of. 

Such being the abstract theory of just remunerative pay- 
ment, its application is practically modified by the fact that 
the order for labor, given in payment, is general, while 
labor received is special. The current coin or document 
is practically an order on the nation for so much work of 
any kind; and this universal applicability to immediate need 
renders it so much more valuable than special labor can 
be, that an order for a less quantity of this general toil will 
always be accepted as a just equivalent for a greater quan- 
tity of special toil. Any given craftsman will always be 
willing to give an hour of his own work in order to receive 
command over half an hour, or even much less, of national 
work. This source of uncertainty, together with the diffi- 
culty of determining the monetary value of skill, 1 renders 

1 Under the term "skill " I mean to include the united force of experi- 
ence, intellect, and passion in their operation on manual labor; and under 
the term " passion," to include the entire range and agency of the moral 
feelings; from the simple patience and gentleness of mind which will give 
continuity and fineness to the touch, or enable one person to work with- 
out fatigue, and with good effect, twice as long as another, up to the 
qualities of character which render science possible — (the retardation of 
science by envy is one of the most tremendous losses in the economy of 
the present century) — and to the incommunicable emotion and imagi- 
nation which are the first and mightiest sources of all value in art. 

It is highly singular that political economists should not yet have per- 
ceived, if not the moral, at least the passionate element, to be an inextri- 
cable quantity in every calculation. I cannot conceive, for instance, how 
it was possible that Mr. Mill should have followed the true clue so far as 
to write, — " No limit can be set to the importance — even in a purely 
productive- and material point of view — of mere thought," without' see- 



158 UNTO THIS LAST. 

the ascertainment (even approximate) of the proper wages 
of any given labor in terms of a currency, matter of consid- 
erable complexity. But they do not affect the principle of 
exchange. The worth of the work may not be easily known ; 
but it has a. worth, just as fixed and real as the specific 
gravity of a substance, though such specific gravity may not 
be easily ascertainable when the substance is united with 
many others. Nor is there any difficulty or chance in 
determining it as in determining the ordinary maxima and 
minima of vulgar political economy. There are few bargains 
in which the buyer can ascertain with anything like pre- 
cision that the seller would have taken no less ; — or the 
seller acquire more than a comfortable faith that the pur- 
chaser would have given no more. This impossibility of 
precise knowledge prevents neither from striving to attain 
the desired point of greatest vexation and injury to the other, 
nor from accepting it for a scientific principle that he is to 
buy for the least and sell for the most possible, though what 

ing that it was logically necessary to add, also, " and of mere feeling." 
And this the more, because in his first definition of labor he includes in 
the idea of it " all feelings of a disagreeable kind connected with the 
employment of one's thoughts in a particular occupation." True; but 
why not, also, " feelings of an agreeable kind ? " It can hardly be sup- 
posed that the feelings which retard labor are more essentially a part of 
the labor than those which accelerate it. The first are paid for as pain, 
the second as power. The workman is merely indemnified for the first; 
but the second both produce a part of the exchangeable value of the 
work, and materially increase its actual quantity. 

" Fritz is with us. lie is worth fifty thousand men." Truly, a large 
addition to the material force; — consisting, however, be it observed, not 
more in operations carried on in Fritz's head, than in operations carried 
on in his armies' heart. " No limit can be set to the importance of mere 
thought." Perhaps not ! Nay, suppose some day it should turn out 
that "mere" thought was in itself a recommendable object of produc- 
tion, and that all Material production was only a step towards this more 
precious Immaterial one? 



QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 1 59 

the real least or most may be he cannot tell. In like manner, 
a just person lays it down for a scientific principle that he 
is to pay a just price, and, without being able precisely to 
ascertain the limits of such a price, will nevertheless strive 
to attain the closest possible approximation to them. A 
practically serviceable approximation he can obtain. It is 
easier to determine scientifically what a man ought to have 
for his work, than what his necessities will compel him to 
take for it. His necessities can only be ascertained by 
empirical, but his due by analytical investigation. In the 
one case, you try your answer to the sum like a puzzled 
schoolboy — till you find one that fits ; in the other, you 
bring out your result within certain limits, by process of 
calculation. . 

Supposing, then, the just wages of any quantity of given 
labor to have been ascertained, let us examine the first 
results of just and unjust payment, when in favor of the 
purchaser or employer ; i.e., when two men are ready to do 
the work, and only one wants to have it done. 

The unjust purchaser forces the two to bid against each 
other till he has reduced their demand to its lowest terms. 
Let us assume that the lowest bidder offers to do the work 
at half its just price. 

The purchaser employs him, and does not employ the 
other. The first or apparetit result is, therefore, that one of 
the two men is left out of employ, or to starvation, just as 
definitely as by the just procedure of giving fair price to the 
best workman. The various writers who endeavored to 
invalidate the positions of my first paper never saw this, 
and assumed that the unjust hirer employed both. He 
employs both no more than the just hirer. The only differ- 
ence (in the outset) is that the just man pays sufficiently, 
the unjust man insufficiently, for the labor of the single 
person employed. 



l6o UNTO THIS LAST. 

I say, "in the outset"; for this first or apparent differ- 
ence is not the actual difference. By the unjust procedure, 
half the proper price of the work is left in the hands of the 
employer. This enables him to hire another man at the 
same unjust rate, on some other kind of work ; and the final 
result is that he has two men working for him at half price, 
and two are out of employ. 

By the just procedure, the whole price of the first piece 
of work goes into the hands of the man who does it. No 
surplus being left in the employer's hands, he cannot hire 
another man for another piece of labor. But by precisely 
so much as his power is diminished, the hired workman's 
power is increased ; that is to say, by the additional half 
of the price he has received ; which additional half he has 
the power of using to employ another man in his service. 
I will suppose, for the moment, the least favorable, though 
quite probable, case — that, though justly treated himself, 
he yet will act unjustly to his subordinate ; and hire at half 
price, if he can. The final result will then be, that one 
man works for the employer, at just price ; one for the 
workman, at half price ; and two, as in the first case, are 
still out of employ. These two, as I said before, are out 
of employ in both cases. The difference between the just 
and unjust procedure does not lie in the number of men 
hired, but in the price paid to them, and the persons by 
whom it is paid. The essential difference, that which I 
want the reader to see clearly, is, that in the unjust case, 
two men work for one, the first hirer. In the just case, one 
man works for the first hirer, one for the person hired, and 
so on, down or up through the various grades of service ; 
the influence being carried forward by justice, and arrested 
by injustice. The universal and constant action of justice/ 
in this matter is, therefore, to diminish the power of wealth,! 
in the hands of one individual, over masses of men, and to 



QIT JUDICATIS TERR.VM. l6l 

distribute it through a chain of men. The actual power 
exerted by the wealth is the same in both cases ; but by 
injustice it is put all in one man's hands, so that he directs 
at once, and with equal force, the labor of a circle of men 
about him ; by the just procedure, he is permitted to touch 
the nearest only, through whom, with diminished force, 
modified by new minds, the energy of the wealth passes on 
to others, and so till it exhausts itself. 

The immediate operation of justice in this respect is 
therefore to diminish the power of wealth, first in acquisition 
of luxury, and, secondly in exercise of moral influence. 
The employer cannot concentrate so multitudinous labor on 
his own interests, nor can he subdue so multitudinous mind 
to his own will. But the secondary operation of justice is 
not less important. The insufficient payment of the group 
of men working for one, places each under a maximum of 
difficulty in rising above his position. The tendency of the 
system is to check advancement. But the sufficient or just 
payment, distributed through a descending series of offices 
or grades of labor, 1 gives each subordinated person fair and 

1 I am sorry to lose time by answering, however curtly, the equivoca- 
tions of the writers who sought to obscure the instances given of regu- 
lated labor in the first of these papers, by confusing kinds, ranks, and 
quantities of labor with its qualities. I never said that a colonel should 
have the same pay as a private, nor a bishop the same pay as a curate. 
Neither did I say that more work ought to be paid as less work (so 
that the curate of a parish of two thousand souls should have no more 
than the curate of a parish of five hundred). But I said that, so far as 
you employ it at all, bad work should be paid no less than good work ; 
as a bad clergyman yet takes his tithes, a bad physician takes his fee, 
and a bad lawyer his costs. And this, as will be farther shown in the 
conclusion, I said, and say, partly because the best work never was nor 
ever will be done for money at all ; but chiefly because, the mpment 
people know they have to pay the bad and good alike, they will try to 
discern the one from the other, and not use the bad. A sagacious 
writer in the Scots?nan asks me if I should like any common scribbler 



1 62 UNTO THIS LAST. 

sufficient means of rising in the social scale, if he chooses 
to use them ; and thus not only diminishes the immediate 
power of wealth, but removes the worst disabilities of 
poverty. 

It is on this vital problem that the entire destiny of the 
laborer is ultimately dependent. Many minor interests 
may sometimes appear to interfere with it, but all branch 
from it. For instance, considerable agitation is often caused 
in the minds of the lower classes when they discover the 
share which they nominally, and, to all appearance, actually, 
pay out of their wages in taxation (I believe thirty-five or 
forty per cent). This sounds very grievous; but in reality 
the laborer does not pay it, but his employer. If the work- 
man had not to pay it, his wages would be less by just that 
sum : competition would still reduce them to the lowest rate 
at which life was possible. Similarly the lower orders 
agitated for the repeal of the corn laws, 1 thinking they 

to be paid by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. as their good authors are. I 
should, if they employed Mm — but would seriously recommend them, 
for the scribbler's sake, as well as their own, not to employ him. The 
quantity of its money which the country at present invests in scribbling 
is not, in the outcome of it, economically spent ; and even the highly 
ingenious person to whom this question occurred, might perhaps have 
been more beneficially employed than in printing it. 

1 I have to acknowledge an interesting communication on the subject 
of free trade from Paisley (for a short letter from " A Well-wisher " at 

, my thanks are yet more due). But the Scottish writer will, I 

fear, be disagreeably surprised to hear, that I am, and always have 
been, an utterly fearless and unscrupulous free-trader. Seven years ago, 
speaking of the various signs of infancy in the European mind {Stones 
of Venice, vol. iii. p. 16S), I wrote: " The first principles of commerce 
were acknowledged by the English parliament only a few months ago, 
and in its free-trade measures, and are still so little understood by the 
million^ that no nation dares to abolish its custom-hottses." 

It will be observed that I do not admit even the idea of reciprocity. 
Let other nations, if they like, keep their ports shut ; every wise nation 
will throw its own open. It is not the opening them, but a sudden, 



QUI JUDICATIS TEKRAM. 1 63 

would be better off if bread were cheaper ; never perceiving 
that as soon as bread was permanently cheaper, wages 
would permanently fall in precisely that proportion. The 
corn laws were rightly repealed ; not, however, because they 
directly oppressed the poor, but because they indirectly 
oppressed them in causing a large quantity of their labor 
to be consumed unproductively. So also unnecessary tax- 
ation oppresses them, through destruction of capital, but the 
destiny of the poor depends primarily always on this one 
question of dueness of wages. Their distress (irrespectively 
of that caused by sloth, minor error, or crime) arises on the 
grand scale from the two reacting forces of competition and 
oppression. There is not yet, nor will yet for ages be, any 
real over-population in the world ; but a local over-population, 
or, more accurately, a degree of population locally unman- 

inconsiderate, and blunderingly experimental manner of opening them^ 
which does the harm. If you have been protecting a manufacture for 
long series of years, you must not take protection off in a moment, so 
as to throw every one of its operatives at once out of employ, any more 
than you must take all its wrappings off a feeble child at once in cold 
weather, though the cumber of them may have been radically injuring 
its health. Little by little, you must restore it to freedom and to air. 

Most people's minds are in curious confusion on the subject of free 
trade, because they suppose it to imply enlarged competition. On the 
contrary, free trade puts an end to all competition. " Protection " 
(among various other mischievous functions) endeavors to enable one 
country to compete with any other in che production of an article at a 
disadvantage. When trade is entirely free, no country can be competed 
with in the articles for the production of which it is naturally calculated; 
nor can it compete with any other in the production of articles for 
which it is not naturally calculated. Tuscany, for instance, cannot 
compete with England in steel, nor England with Tuscany in oil. They 
must exchange their steel and oil. Which exchange should be as frank 
and free as honesty and the sea-winds can make it. Competition, 
indeed, arises at first, and sharply, in order to prove which is strongest 
in any given manufacture possible to both ; this point once ascertained, 
competition is at an end. 



164 UNTO THIS LAST. 

ageable under existing circumstances for want of forethought 
and sufficient machinery, necessarily shows itself by pressure 
of competition ; and the taking advantage of this competi- 
tion by the purchaser to obtain their labor unjustly cheap, 
consummates at once their suffering and his own ; for in 
this (as I believe in every other kind of slavery) the 
oppressor suffers at last more than the oppressed, and those 
magnificent lines of Pope, even in all their force, fall short 
of the truth — 

" Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf, 
Each does but hate his neighbor as himself: 
Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides 
The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides." 

The collateral and reversionary operations of justice in 
this matter I shall examine hereafter (it being needful first 
to define the nature of value) ; proceeding then to consider 
within what practical terms a juster system may be estab- 
lished ; and ultimately the vexed question of the destinies 
of the unemployed workmen. 1 Lest, however, the reader 

1 I should be glad if the reader would first clear the ground for him- 
self so far as to determine whether the difficulty lies in getting the work 
or getting the pay for it. Does he consider occupation itself to be an 
expensive luxury, difficult of attainment, of which too little is to be 
found in the world ? or is it rather that, while in the enjoyment even of 
the most athletic delight, men must nevertheless be maintained, and this 
maintenance is not always forthcoming ? We must be clear on this head 
before going farther, as most people are loosely in the habit of talking of 
the difficulty of " finding employment." Is it employment that we want 
to find, or support during employment ? Is it idleness we wish to put 
an end to, or hunger? We have to take up both questions in succes- 
sion, only not both at the same time. No doubt that work is a luxury, 
and a very great one. It is, indeed, at once a luxury and a necessity; 
no man can retain either health of mind or body without it. So pro- 
foundly do I feel this, that, as will be seen in the sequel, one of the 
principal objects I would recommend to benevolent and practical persons, 



QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 165 

should be alarmed at some of the issues to which our inves- 
tigations seem to be tending, as if in their bearing against 
the power of wealth they had something in common with 
those of socialism. I wish him to know, in accurate terms, 
one or two of the main points which I have in view. 

Whether socialism has made more progress among the 
army and navy (where payment is made on my principles), 
or among the manufacturing operatives (who are paid on 
my opponents' principles), I leave it to those opponents to 
ascertain and declare. Whatever their conclusion may be, 
I think it necessary to answer for myself only this : that if 
there be any one point insisted on throughout my works 
more frequently than another, that one point is the impossi- 
bility of Equality. My continual aim has been to show the 
eternal superiority of some men to others, sometimes even 
of one man to all others ; and to show also the advisability 
of appointing such persons or person to guide, to lead, or on 
occasion even to compel and subdue, their inferiors, accord- 
ing to their own better knowledge and wiser will. My 
principles of Political Economy were all involved in a single 
phrase spoken three years ago at Manchester : " Soldiers of 
the Ploughshare as well as soldiers of the Sword ": and they 
were all summed in a single sentence in the last volume of 
Modern Painters — " Government and cooperation are in 
all things the Laws of Life ; Anarchy and competition the 
Laws of Death.'' 

'And with respect to the mode in which these general 
principles affect the secure possession of property, so far 

is to induce rich people to seek for a larger quantity of this luxury than 
they at present possess. Nevertheless, it appears by experience that 
even this healthiest of pleasures may be indulged in to excess, and that 
human beings are just as liable to surfeit of labor as to surfeit of meat ; 
so that, as on the one hand, it may be charitable to provide, for some 
people, lighter dinner, and more work, — for others it may be equally 
expedient to provide lighter work, and more dinner. 



1 66 UNTO THIS LAST. 

am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist 
of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an 
extension in its range ; and whereas it has long been 
known and declared that the poor have no right to the 
property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared 
that the rich have no right to the property of the poor. 

But that the working of the system which I have under- 
taken to develop would in many ways shorten the apparent 
and direct, though not the unseen and collateral, power, 
both of wealth, as the Lady of Pleasure, and of capital as 
the Lord of Toil, I do not deny : on the contrary, I affirm 
it in all joyfulness ; knowing that the attraction of riches is 
already too strong, as their authority is already too weighty, 
for the reason of mankind. I said in my last paper that 
nothing in history had ever been so disgraceful to human 
intellect as the acceptance among us of the common doc- 
trines of political economy as a science. I have many 
grounds for saying this, but one of the chief may be given 
in few words. I know no previous instance in history of a 
nation's establishing a systematic disobedience to the first 
principles of its professed religion. The writings which we 
(verbally) esteem as divine, not only denounce the love of 
money as the source of all evil, and as an idolatry abhorred 
of the Deity, but declare mammon service to be the accurate 
and irreconcilable opposite of God's service : and, when- 
ever they speak of riches absolute, and poverty absolute, 
declare woe to the rich, and blessing to the poor. Where- 
upon we forthwith investigate a science of becoming rich, 
as the shortest road to national prosperity. 

" Tai Cristian dannera l'Etiope, 
Ouando si partiranno i due collegi, 

L'UNO IN ETERNO RICCO, E l'ALTRO INOPE." 



ANNOTATIONS. \6j 

ANNOTATIONS. 

i. 

UNTO THIS LAST. 

Page 114. Soi-disant (Swa-dee-sang') : would-be; pretended. 

116. Ossifiant theory of progress: the theory assumed is 
based exclusively upon man's physical constitution ; hence, a 
bone-making, or skeleton-like theory of progress. 

Humeri : bones of the upper arms. 

1 20. Anomalous force : unusual, contrary to rule. The mean- 
ing is that the influence exerted by the affections is not usually 
taken account of by the political economist, and that their action 
nullifies his calculations. 

123. Esprit de corps (Es-pree-duh-cor') : one spirit animating 
an entire body of men. 

Sim'ony : the crime of buying or selling ecclesiastical prefer- 
ments. The name refers to the act of Simon Magus, who wished 
to purchase the power of conferring the Holy Spirit. (Acts viii.) 

125. The walls of Fortune : money-getting is here metaphori- 
cally pictured as an assault by an army upon a walled city whose 
ruler is Fortune or Chance. 

127. Bra'vo : a bandit, a highway robber. 

1 2<j. Excursion : the title of one of Wordsworth's poems, one 
of whose characters is a wandering peddler with a philosophical 
turn of mind. 

AutoTycus : a peddler and witty rogue in Shakespeare's " A 
Winter's Tale." 



THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 

135. Mer'ces : a Latin word meaning reward for services ren- 
dered ; wages. 

140. Po'lis : the Greek word for city or state, from which is 
derived politics, the science of the government of a state. 



1 68 UNTO THIS LAST. 

144. Dura plains: an allusion to the act of Nebuchadnezzar, 
who set up an image of gold in the plain of Dura, in the province 
of Babylon (see Daniel iii. 1), and commanded all men to bow 
down and worship the image, on pain of being cast into a fiery- 
furnace. Ruskin thinks that a false political economy calls upon 
men to applaud a system which brings upon many suffering 
greater than that of a fiery furnace. 

146. Byzan'tine : belonging to Byzantium, which is the old 
name for Constantinople. 

Byz'ants : gold coins worth about seventy-five dollars ; so-called 
because they were coined at Byzantium. 

147. Indus: a river in India whose sands were formerly 
thought to be rich in gold. 

Adamant of Golconda : the diamond imported from Golconda, 
a city of India, celebrated in ancient times as a diamond mart. 

A Heathen one : an allusion to Cornelia, a Roman matron, 
mother of the Gracchi, who, when asked to admire the jewels of 
a friend, pointed to her two boys saying : " These are my jewels." 



III. 

QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 

147. A Jew Merchant : Solomon. 

The Gold Coast : probably the Arabian coast of the Red Sea. 

151. Ma'rah : Bitterness ; see Exodus xv. 23. 

152. Par excellence: eminent above all others. 

158. Maxima and minima: highest and lowest: here the first 
and last principles of the common science of political economy. 

1 66. " Tai, Cristian dannera l'Eti6pe, 

Ouando si partiranno i due collegi, 
L'uno in eterno ricco, e l'altro in6pe." 

Thus the Christian will condemn the Ethiopian, when the two 
colleagues shall separate, the one eternally rich, the other forever 
poor. 



God has made man to take pleasure in the use of his eyes, wits, and 
body. And the foolish creature is continually trying to live without 
looking at anything, without thinking about anything, and without 
doing anything. And he thus becomes not only a brute, but the 
unhappiest of brutes. . . . Every pleasure got otherwise than God 
meant it — got cheaply, thievingly, and swiftly, when He has ordered 
that it should be got dearly, honestly, and slowly, — turns into a venom- 
ous burden, and, past as a pleasure, remains as a load, increasing day 
by day its deadly coat of burning mail. The joys of hatred, of battle, 
of lust, of vain knowledge, of vile luxury, all pass into slow torture : 
nothing remains to man, nothing is possible to him of true joy, but in 
the righteous love of his fellows, in the knowledge of the laws and the 
glory of God, and in the daily use of the faculties of soul and body 
with which that God has endowed him. — Fors, Letter LXXXIX. 

The True Ideal consists not in the naked beauty of statues, nor in 
the gauze of flowers and crackling tinsel of theatres, but in the clothed 
and fed beauty of living men, and in the lights and laughs of happy 
homes. — Modern Painters. 




JOHN RUSKIN 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

On New Year's Day, 187 1, Mr. Ruskin issued the first 
of a series of ninety-six monthly letters addressed to the 
working men and laborers of England. 

In the second letter, the meaning of the enigmatical title 
is explained. " How you may make your fortune, or mar 
it" is the purport of the words as used by Mr. Ruskin. 
In one letter, he says : "The current and continual purpose 
of Fors Clavigera is to explain the powers of Chance or 
Fortune (Fors), as she offers to men the conditions of 
prosperity ; and as these conditions are accepted or refused, 
nails down and fastens their fate forever, being thus 
'Clavigera' — nail-bearing." The conditions by which the 
honor and true happiness of life may be secured, are shown 
to be : first, honest effort ; second, patient endurance of 
what cannot be bettered by individual action ; third, a firm 
trust in the righteous government of a Power that wills 
justice. 

Mr. Ruskin availed himself of the freedom permitted by 
letter-writing to discourse in a familiar yet forcible manner 
rning the evil tendencies of our modern life, enforcing 
his teaching by illustrations from history, literature, Script- 
ure, science, and art ; and touching upon almost every 
possible theme, from household economy to the gravest 
questions of education, government, and religion. 



172 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

These letters were published in pamphlet form and sold 
at first at seven pence, but later at ten pence per copy, the 
author declaring that the price of two pots of beer ought 
not to be too much to pay for learning truths upon which 
the vital welfare of the readers must depend. In spite of 
their high price, and notwithstanding the fact that they 
were not advertised, they were so widely sought that, in 
1875, all the earlier numbers were sold ; thus proving that 
Mr. Ruskin was right in thinking that " the public has a 
long nose and will scent out what it wants." 

Through these letters, Mr. Ruskin also made known his 
plans for regenerating the life of workmen by founding 
agricultural communities, such as his Guild of St. George, 
whose laws and usages embodied the practical application 
of his ideas of what constituted wholesome living. 

Mr. Ruskin neither preaches nor practices asceticism. 

He wishes to bring people of all classes to lead lives 
made happy by daily useful toil, and by joyful recognition 
of the beauty of the world without them ; while, through 
cultivation of the faculties of " admiration, hope, and 
love," day by day a higher spiritual life shall be enkindled 
within them. 



Mr. Ruskin writes the first of these letters with a heart 
heavy with sadness caused by the sight of two leading 
civilized nations engaged in deadly conflict. The Franco- 
Prussian war was at its height ; Paris was besieged — 
suffering the worst horrors of war's destructive violence. 

The burden of this letter's message is that national 
selfishness and cowardice prevent the understanding of the 
laws of international justice. War is the great scourge 
from which Christian civilization should free itself, for it is 
to wars that the heaviest burdens of taxation, as well as the 
wicked sacrifice of human lives, are attributable. 



rNTRODUCTORY. 1 73 

In the contests over forms of government, Mr. Ruskin 
sees nothing worth contending for. He believes that the 
one important thing in government is to have the laws 
administered by honest men. 

The general well-being of nations is to be secured on 
the same principles as among neighboring households, each 
being advantaged by his neighbor's prosperity. The begin- 
nings of national health must be in making it possible for 
all to procure the necessities of life. These cannot be 
secured either by the fine arts, or by the military arts ; 
nor can capital in the form of machinery do this. 



Letter II, after explaining the mystic title, discusses the 
nature of Rent. In England, the feudal tenure of land 
still prevails ; but, although the Squires have become some- 
what demoralized, Mr. Ruskin considers them honest at 
heart, and worthy of being trusted. 

What constitutes useful and useless employment is next 
considered. All labor which dwarfs or darkens the life of 
the laborer, is useless and demoralizing, and, in the end, 
destructive. The letter concludes with a statement of the 
threefold conditions of useful living. 



In Letter III, Mr. Ruskin shows the dependence of the 
present upon the character of the past ; of the individual, 
upon the acts of others ; the working out of that " Fors " 
or Fate by which the children must suffer for the sins of 
their fathers. 

By a subtle, yet clear analysis, he traces some of England's 
present evils to the rapacity, and her strength to the wisdom 
of former kings. 



174 F0RS CLAVIGERA. 

In like manner, the future depends upon the worth or 
the worthlessness of the present. The hope of material, 
personal reward as a motive to virtue must give place to a 
desire to live worthily for the sake of contributing to the 
good life of the world. 

Letter IV discusses, first, the value of what is called 
education. Knowledge of facts does not of itself make 
one really educated. The highest knowledge is that which 
gives the art of living truly. 

Next, the nature and use of riches are considered. With 
searching irony, Mr. Ruskin criticises the accepted ideas 
concerning utility and values ; and declares that, whether 
as the spoils of conquest, or by the operation of the princi- 
ples of modern political economy, the few have generally 
been enriched by pillage of the poor. 

In Letter V, Mr. Ruskin deplores what seem to him the 
most painful effects of the materialistic science of our 
time: namely, the fear of over-production, which has been 
the cause of enforced idleness and pinching poverty, and 
the loss of reverent love for nature. 

Avaricious greed, falsely denominated business enterprise, 
has violated so many of the shrines of beauty in Nature's 
temples that Ruskin, the priest of God at the altar of 
Nature, mourns over these desecrations of the holy of 
holies. Like Mr. Wordsworth, he laments that — 

" The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers ; 
Little we see in nature that is ours. 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon." 

Machinery, he thinks, cannot increase the possibilities of 
life, but only the possibilities of idleness. The things 



INTRODUCTORY. 1/5 

which are essential to happy, healthy life are, mainly, three 
material ones : Pure Air, Water, and Earth ; and three 
spiritual ones : Admiration, Hope, and Love. To secure 
these to as many as he can reach, Mr. Ruskin proposes to 
devote one-tenth of his income to make " some piece of 
English ground beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful " ; and he 
asks the aid of any who believe that this, his plan for the 
Company of St. George, is desirable. 



Of Lctlcr VI, Mr. Ruskin himself says elsewhere that 
it is desultory, because written under excitement of continual 
news of the revolution in Paris, and that it limits itself to 
noticing some of the causes of that revolution : chiefly the 
idleness, disobedience, and covetousness of the richer and 
middle classes. 



In 1877, St. George's Guild was established at Sheffield. 
Naturally, the difficulties of securing intelligent cooperation 
caused Mr. Ruskin great discouragement at times. Having 
expressed this feeling in some of his letters, a Companion 
of St. George, one of the workmen, wrote to cheer him. 
From his letter the following extract is taken as showing 
the high regard felt for Mr. Ruskin : — 

" To me it seems that the good of you is that you have a 
heart to feel the sorrows of the world — that you have 
courage and power to speak against injustice and falsehood, 
and more than all, that you act out what you say. Every- 
body else seems asleep or dead — wrapped up in their own 
comfort or satisfaction, — and utterly deaf to any appeal. 
Do not think your work is less than it is, and -let all 
unworthy anxieties go. The work is God's, if ever any 
work was. and He will look after its success." 



176 FORS CLAVIGERA. 



LETTER I. 

Denmark Hill, 1st January, 1871. 
Friends, — 

We begin to-day another group of ten years, not in 
happy circumstances. Although, for the time, exempted 
from the direct calamities which have fallen on neighbor- 
ing states, believe me, we have not escaped them because 
of our better deservings, nor by our better wisdom ; but only 
for one of two bad reasons, or for both : either that we have 
not sense enough to determine in a great national quarrel 
which side is right, or that we have not courage to defend 
the right, when we have discerned it. 

I believe that both these bad reasons exist in full force ; 
that our own political divisions prevent us from understand- 
ing the laws of international justice ; and that, even if we 
did, we should not dare to defend, perhaps not even to 
assert them, being on this first day of January, 187 1, in 
much bodily fear ; that is to say, afraid of the Russians ; 
afraid of the Prussians ; afraid of the Americans ; afraid of 
the Hindoos ; afraid of the Chinese ; afraid of the Japanese ; 
afraid of the New Zealanders ; and afraid of the Caffres ; 
and very justly so, being conscious that our only real desire 
respecting any of these nations has been to get as much out 
of them as we could. 

They have no right to complain of us, notwithstanding, 
since we have all, lately, lived ourselves in the daily en- 
deavor to get as much out of our neighbors and friends as 
we could ; and having by this means, indeed, got a good 
deal out of each other, and putting nothing into each other, 
the actually obtained result, this day, is a state of emptiness 
in purse and stomach, for the solace of which our boasted 
"insular position" is ineffectual. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. I 77 

I have listened to many ingenious persons, who say we 
are better off now than ever we were before. I do not know 
how well off we were before ; but I know positively that 
main very deserving persons of my acquaintance have great 
difficulty in living under these improved circumstances ; 
also, that my desk is full of begging letters, eloquently 
written either by distressed or dishonest people ; and that 
we cannot be called, as a nation, well off, while so many of 
us are living either in honest or in villainous beggary. 

For my own part, I will put up with this state of things, 
passively, not an hour longer. I am not an unselfish per- 
son, nor an Evangelical one ; I have no particular pleasure 
in doing good ; neither do I dislike doing it so much as to 
expect to be rewarded for it in another world. But I simply 
cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, nor do any- 
thing else that I like, and the very light of the morning sky, 
when there is any — which is seldom, now-a-days, near Lon- 
don — has become hateful to me, because of the misery that 
I know of, and see signs of, where I know it not, which no 
imagination can interpret too bitterly. 

Therefore, as I have said, I will endure it no longer 
quietly ; but henceforward, with any few or many who will 
help, do my poor best to abate this misery. But that I may 
do my best, I must not be miserable myself any longer ; for 
no man who is wretched in his own heart, and feeble in his 
own work, can rightly help others. 

Now my own special pleasure has lately been connected 
with a given duty. I have been ordered to endeavor to 
make our English youth care somewhat for the arts ; and 
must put my uttermost strength into that business. To 
which end I must clear myself from all sense of responsi- 
bility for the material distress around me, by explaining to 
you, once for all, in the shortest English I can, what I know 
of its causes ; by pointing out to you some of the methods 



178 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

by which it might be relieved ; and by setting aside regularly 
some small percentage of my income, to assist, as one of 
yourselves, in what one and all we shall have to do ; each of 
us laying by something, according to our means, for the 
common service ; and having amongst us at last, be it ever 
so small, a national Store instead of a National Debt. 
Store which, once securely founded, will fast increase, pro- 
vided only you take the pains to understand, and have 
perseverance to maintain, the elementary principles of 
Human Economy, which have, of late, not only been lost 
sight of, but wilfully and formally entombed under pyramids 
of falsehood. 

And first I beg you most solemnly to convince yourselves 
of the partly comfortable, partly formidable fact, that your 
prosperity is in your own hands. That only in a remote 
degree does it depend on external matters, and least of all, 
on forms of Government. In all times of trouble, the first 
thing to be done is to make the most of whatever forms of 
government you have got, by setting honest men to work 
them (the trouble, in all probability, having arisen only 
from the want of such) ; and for the rest, you must in no 
wise concern yourselves about them : more particularly it 
would be lost time to do so at this moment, when whatever 
is popularly said about governments cannot but be absurd, 
for want of definition of terms. Consider, for instance, the 
ridiculousness of the division of parties into "Liberal" and 
"Conservative." There is no opposition whatever between 
those two kinds of men. There is opposition between 
Liberals and Illiberals ; that is to say, between people who 
desire liberty, and who dislike it. I am a violent Illiberal ; 
but it does not follow that I must be a Conservative. A 
Conservative is a person who wishes to keep things as they 
are ; and he is opposed to a Destructive, who wishes to 
destroy them, or to an Innovator, who wishes to alter them. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. I 79 

Now, though I am an Illiberal, there are many things I 
should like to destroy. I should like to destroy most of the 
railroads in England, and all the railroads in Wales. I 
should like to destroy and rebuild the Houses of Parliament, 
the National Gallery, and the East end of London ; and to 
destroy, without rebuilding, the new town of Edinburgh, the 
north suburb of Geneva, and the city of New York. Thus 
in many things I am the reverse of Conservative ; nay, 
there are some long-established things which I hope to see 
changed before I die ; but I want still to keep the fields of 
England green, and her cheeks red ; and that girls should 
be taught to curtsy, and boys to take their hats off, when a 
professor or otherwise dignified person passes by ; and that 
kings should keep their crowns on their heads, and bishops 
their crosiers in their hands, and should duly recognize the 
significance of the crown, and the use of the crook. 

As you would find it thus impossible to class me justly 
in either party, so you would find it impossible to class any 
person whatever, who had clear and developed political 
opinions, and who could define them accurately. Men only 
associate in parties by sacrificing their opinions, or by 
having none worth sacrificing ; and the effect of party 
government is always to develop hostilities and hypocrisies, 
and to extinguish ideas. 

Thus the so-called Monarchic and Republican parties 
have thrown Europe into conflagration and shame, merely 
for want of clear conception of the things they imagine 
themselves to fight for. The moment a Republic was pro- 
claimed in France, Garibaldi came to fight for it as a 
"Holy Republic." But Garibaldi could not know, — no 
mortal creature could know, — whether it was going to be 
a Holy or Profane Republic. You cannot evoke any form 
of government by beat of drum. The proclamation of a 
Government implies the considerate acceptance of a code 



l80 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

of laws, and the appointment of means for their execution, 
neither of which things can be done in an instant. You 
may overthrow a government, and announce yourselves law- 
less, in the twinkling of an eye, as you can blow up a ship, 
or upset and sink one. But you can no more create a 
government with a word, than an iron-clad. 

No ; nor can you even define its character in few words ; 
the measure of sanctity in it depending on degrees of 
justice in the administration of law, which are often inde- 
pendent of form altogether. Generally speaking, the com- 
munity of thieves in London or Paris have adopted 
Republican Institutions, and live at this day without any 
acknowledged captain or head ; but under Robin Hood, 
brigandage in England, and under Sir John Hawkwood, 
brigandage in Italy, became strictly Monarchical. Theft 
could not, merely by that dignified form of government, 
be made a holy manner of life ; but it was made both 
dexterous and decorous. The pages of the English knights 
under Sir John Hawkwood spent nearly all their spare time 
in burnishing the knights' armor, and made it always so 
bright that they were called "the White Company." And 
the Notary of Tortona, Azario, tells us of them, that those 
foragers (furatores) " were more expert than any plunderers 
in Lombardy. They, for the most part, sleep by day and 
watch by night, and have such plans and artifices for taking 
towns, that never were the like or equal of them witnessed." x 

The actual Prussian expedition into France merely differs 
from Sir John's in Italy by being more generally savage, 
much less enjoyable, and by its clumsier devices for taking 
towns ; for Sir John had no occasion to burn their libraries. 
In neither case does the monarchical form of government . 

1 Communicated to me by my friend, Mr. Rawdon Brown, of Venice, 
from his yet unpublished work, The English in Italy in the 14th 
Century. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. I Si 

bestow any Divine right of theft; but it puts the available 
forces into a convenient form. Even with respect to conve- 
nience only, it is not yet determinable by the evidence of 
history, what is absolutely the best form of government to 
live under. There are, indeed, said to be republican vil- 
lages (towns ?) in America, where everybody is civil, honest, 
and substantially comfortable, but these villages have several 
unfair advantages — there are no lawyers in them, no town 
councils, and no parliaments. Such republicanism, if possi- 
ble on a large scale, would be worth fighting for; though, in 
my own private mind, I confess I should like to keep a few 
lawyers, for the sake of their wigs — and the faces under 
them — generally very grand when they are really good 
lawyers — and for their (unprofessional) talk. Also, I 
should like to have a Parliament, into which people might 
be elected on condition of their never saying anything about 
politics, that one might still feel sometimes that one was 
acquainted with an M.P. In the meantime, Parliament is a 
luxury to the British squire, and an honor to the British 
manufacturer, which you may leave them to enjoy in their 
own way ; provided only you make them always clearly 
explain, when they tax you, what they want with your 
money ; and that you understand yourselves, what money is, 
and how it is got, and what it is good for, and bad for. 

These matters I hope to explain to you in this and some 
following letters ; which, among various other reasons, it 
is necessary that I should write in order that you may 
make no mistake as to the real economical results of Art 
teaching, whether in the Universities or elsewhere. I will 
begin by directing your attention particularly to that 
point. 

The first object of all work — not the principal one, but 
the first and necessary one — is to get food, clothes, lodging, 
and fuel. 



I 82 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

It is quite possible to have too much of all these things. 
I know a great many gentlemen who eat too large dinners ; 
a great many ladies who have too many clothes. I know 
there is lodging to spare in London, for I have several 
houses there myself, which I can't let. And I know there 
is fuel to spare everywhere, since we get up steam to pound 
the roads with, while our men stand idle ; or drink till they 
can't stand, idle, or any otherwise. 

Notwithstanding, there is agonizing distress even in this 
highly-favored England, in some classes, for want of food, 
clothes, lodging, and fuel. And it has become a popular 
idea among the benevolent and ingenious, that you may in 
great part remedy these deficiencies by teaching, to these 
starving and shivering persons, Science and Art. In their 
way — as I do not doubt you will believe — I am very fond 
of both ; and I am sure it will be beneficial for the British 
nation to be lectured upon the merits of Michael Angelo, 
and the nodes of the moon. But I should strongly object 
myself to being lectured on either, while I was hungry and 
cold ; and I suppose the same view of the matter would 
be taken by the greater number of British citizens in those 
predicaments. So that, I am convinced, their present eager- 
ness for instruction in painting and astronomy proceeds 
from an impression in their minds that, somehow, they may 
paint or star-gaze themselves into clothes and victuals. 
Now, it is perfectly true that you may sometimes sell a 
picture for a thousand pounds ; but the chances are greatly 
against your doing so — much more than the chances of a 
lottery. In the first place, you must paint a very clever 
picture ; and the chances are greatly against your doing 
that. In the second place, you must meet with an amiable 
picture-dealer ; and the chances are somewhat against your 
doing that. In the third place, the amiable picture-dealer 
must meet with a fool ; and the chances are not always in 



FORS CLAVIGERA. I S3 

favor even of his doing that — though, as I gave exactly the 
sum in question for a picture, myself, only the other day, it 
is not for me to say so. Assume, however, to put the case 
most favorably, that what with the practical results of the 
energies of Mr. Cole at Kensington, and the aesthetic impres- 
sions produced by various lectures at Cambridge and Oxford, 
the profits of art employment might be counted on as a 
ratable income. Suppose even that the ladies of the richer 
classes should come to delight no less in new pictures than 
in new dresses; and that picture-making should thus become 
as constant and lucrative an occupation as dress-making. 
Still, you know, they can't buy pictures and dresses too. 
If they buy two pictures a day, they can't buy two dresses a 
day; or if they do, they must save in something else. They 
have but a certain income, be it never so large. They 
spend that, now ; and you can't get more out of them. 
Even if they lay by money, the time comes when somebody 
must spend it. You will find that they do verily spend now 
all they have, neither more nor less. If ever they seem to 
spend more, it is only by running in debt and not paying ; 
if they for a time spend less, some day the overplus must 
come into circulation. All they have, they spend ; more 
than that, they cannot at any time ; less than that, they can 
only for a short time. 

Whenever, therefore, any new industry, such as this of 
picture-making, is invented, of which the profits depend on 
patronage, it merely means that you have effected a diver- 
sion of the current of money in your own favor, and to 
somebody else's loss. Nothing really has been gained by 
the nation, though probably much time and wit, as well as 
sundry people's senses, have been lost. Before such a 
diversion can be effected, a great many kind things must 
have been done ; a great deal of excellent advice given ; 
ami an immense quantity of ingenious trouble taken : the 



1 84 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

arithmetical course of the business throughout being, that 
for every penny you are yourself better, somebody else is a 
penny the worse ; and the net result of the whole precisely 
zero. 

Zero, of course, I mean, as far as money is concerned. It 
may be more dignified for working women to paint than to 
embroider ; and it may be a very charming piece of self- 
denial, in a young lady, to order a high art fresco instead of 
a ball-dress ; but as far as cakes and ale are concerned, it is 
all the same, — there is but so much money to be got by 
you, or spent by her, and not one farthing more, usually a 
great deal less, by high art, than by low. Zero, also, 
observe, I mean partly in a complimentary sense to the 
work executed. If you have done no good by painting, at 
least you have done no serious mischief. A bad picture is 
indeed a dull thing to have in a house, and in a certain 
sense a mischievous thing ; but it won't blow the roof off. 
Whereas, of the most things which the English, French, and 
Germans are paid for making now-a-days, — cartridges, 
cannon, and the like,- — you know the best thing we can 
possibly hope is that they may be useless, and the net result 
of them, zero. 

The thing, therefore, that you have to ascertain, approx- 
imately, in order to determine on some consistent organiza- 
tion, is the maximum of wages-fund you have to depend on to 
start with, that is to say, virtually, the sum of the income of 
the gentlemen of England. Do not trouble yourselves at 
first about France or Germany, or any other foreign country. 
The principle of Free-trade is, that French gentlemen 
should employ English workmen, for whatever the English 
can do better than the French ; and the English gentlemen 
should employ French workmen, for whatever the French 
can do better than the English. It is a very right principle, 
but merely extends the question to a wider field. Suppose, 



FORS CLAVIGERA. I 85 

for the present, that France, and every other country but 
your own, were — what I suppose you would, if you had 
your way, like them to be — sunk under water, and that 
England were the only country in the world. Then, how 
would you live in it most comfortably ? Find out that, 
and you will then easily find out how two countries can 
exist together ; or more, not only without need for fighting, 
but to each other's advantage. 

For, indeed, the laws by which two next-door neighbors 
might live most happily — the one not being the better for 
his neighbor's poverty, but the worse, and the better for his 
neighbor's prosperity — are those also by which it is con- 
venient and wise for two parishes, two provinces, or two 
kingdoms to live side by side. And the nature of every 
commercial and military operation which takes place in 
Europe, or in the world, may always be best investigated by 
supposing it limited to the districts of a single country. 
Kent and Northumberland exchange hops and coals on 
precisely the same economical principles as Italy and Eng- 
land exchange oil for iron ; and the essential character of 
the war between Germany and France may be best under- 
stood by supposing it a dispute between Lancashire and 
Yorkshire for the line of the Ribble. Suppose that Lanca- 
shire, having absorbed Cumberland and Cheshire, and been 
much insulted and troubled by Yorkshire in consequence, 
and at last attacked ; and having victoriously repulsed the 
attack, and retaining old grudges against Yorkshire, about 
the color of roses, from the 15 th century, declares that it 
cannot possibly be safe against the attacks of Yorkshire 
any longer, unless it gets the towns of Giggleswick and 
Wigglesworth, and a fortress on Pen-y-gent. Yorkshire 
replying that this is totally inadmissible, and that it will eat 
its last horse, and perish to its last Yorkshireman, rather 
than part with a stone of Giggleswick, a crag of Pen-y-gent, 



I 86 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

or a ripple of Ribble, — Lancashire with its Cumbrian and 
Cheshire contingents invades Yorkshire, and meeting with 
much Divine assistance, ravages the West Riding, and 
besieges York on Christmas Day. That is the actual gist of 
the whole business ; and in the same manner you may see 
the downright common-sense — if any is to be seen — of 
other human proceedings, by taking them first under narrow 
and homely conditions. So for the present, we will fancy 
ourselves, what you tell me you all want to be, independent : 
we will take no account of any other country but Britain ; 
and on that condition, I will begin to show you in my next 
paper how we ought to live, after ascertaining the utmost 
limits of the wages-fund, which means the income of our 
gentlemen ; that is to say, essentially, the income of those 
who have command of the land, and therefore of all food. 

What you call "wages," practically, is the quantity of food 
which the possessor of the land gives you, to work for him. 
There is finally, no " capital " but that. If all the money of 
all the capitalists in the whole world were destroyed ; the 
notes and bills burnt, the gold irrecoverably buried, and 
all the machines and apparatus of manufactures crushed, 
by a mistake in signals, in one catastrophe ; and nothing 
remained but the land, with its animals and vegetables, and 
buildings for shelter, ■ — the poorer population would be very 
little worse off than they are at this instant ; and their labor, 
instead of being "limited" by the destruction, would be 
greatly stimulated. They would feed themselves from the 
animals and growing crops ; heap here and there a few tons 
of ironstone together, build rough walls round them to get a 
blast, and in a fortnight they would have iron tools again, 
and be ploughing and fighting, just as usual. It is only we 
who had the capital who would suffer ; we should not be 
able to live idle, as we do now, and many of us — I, for 
instance — should starve at once : but you, though little the 



FORS CLAVIGERA. I 87 

worse, would none of you be the better, eventually, for our 
loss — or starvation. The removal of superfluous mouths 
would indeed benefit you somewhat, for a time ; but you 
would soon replace them with hungrier ones ; and there are 
many of us who are quite worth our meat to you in different 
ways, which I will explain in due place : also I will show 
you that our money is really likely to be useful to you in its 
accumulated form (besides that, in the instances when it 
has been won by work, it justly belongs to us), so only that 
you are careful never to let us persuade you into borrowing 
it, and paying us interest for it. You will find a very amus- 
ing story, explaining your position in that case, at the 117th 
page of the Manual of Political Economy, published this year 
at Cambridge, for your early instruction, in an almost devo- 
tionally catechetical form, by Messrs. Macmillan. 

Perhaps I had better quote it to you entire : it is taken 
by the author "from the French." 

There was once in a village a poor carpenter, who worked hard 
from morning to night. One day James thought to himself, " With 
my hatchet, saw, and hammer, I can only make coarse furniture, 
and can only get the pay for such. If I had a plane, I should 
please my customers more, and they would pay me more. Yes, I 
am resolved, I will make myself a plane." At the end of ten 
days, James had in his possession an admirable plane, which he 
valued all the more for having made it himself. Whilst he was 
reckoning all the profits which he expected to derive from the use 
of it, he was interrupted by William, a carpenter in the neighboring 
village. William, having admired the plane, was struck with the 
advantages which might be gained from it. He said to James : — 

" You must do me a service ; lend me the plane for a year." 
As might be expected, James cried out, " How can you think of 
such a thing, William ? Well, if I do you this service, what will 
you do for me in return ? " 

W. Nothing. Don't you know that a loan ought to be gra- 
tuitous? 



I 88 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

J. I know nothing of the sort ;-but I do know that if I were to 
lend you my plane for a year, it would be giving it to you. To 
tell you the truth, that was not what I made it for. 

IV. Very well, then ; I ask you to do me a service ; what ser- 
vice do you ask me in return? 

/. First, then, in a year the plane, will be done for. You must 
therefore give me another exactly like it. 

W. That is perfectly just. I submit to these conditions. I 
think you must be satisfied with this, and can require nothing 
further. 

J. I think otherwise. I made the plane for myself, and not for 
you. I expected to gain some advantage from it. I have made 
the plane for the purpose of improving my work and my condition ; 
if you merely return it to me in a year, it is you who will gain the 
profit of it during the whole of that time. I am not bound to do 
you such a service without receiving anything in return. There- 
fore, if you wish for my plane, besides the restoration already 
bargained for, you must give me a new plank as a compensation 
for the advantages of which I shall be deprived. 

These terms were agreed to, but the singular part of it is that at 
the end of the year, when the plane came into James's possession, 
he lent it again ; recovered it, and lent ii a third and fourth time. 
It has passed into the hands of his son, who still lends it. Let us 
examine this little story. The plane is the symbol of all capital, 
and the plank is the symbol of all interest. 

If this be an abridgment, what a graceful piece of highly 
wrought literature the original story must be ! I take the 
liberty of abridging it a little more. 

James makes a plane, lends it to William on ist January 
for a year. William gives him a plank for the loan of it, 
wears it out, and makes another for James, which he gives 
him on 31st December. On ist January, he again borrows 
the new one ; and the arrangement is repeated continuously. 
The position of William therefore is, that he makes a plane 
every 31st of December ; lends it to James till the next day, 
and pays James a plank annually for the privilege of lending 



FORS CLAVIGERA. I»9 

it to him on that evening. This, in future investigations of 
capital and interest, we will call, if you please, " the position 
of William." 

You may not, at the first glance, see where the fallacy lies 
(the writer of this story evidently counts on your not see- 
ing it at all). 

If James did not lend the plane to William, he could only 
get his gain of a plank by working with it himself, and 
wearing it out himself. When he had worn it out at the 
end of the year, he would, therefore, have to make another 
for himself. William, working with it instead, gets the 
advantage instead, which he must, therefore, pay James his 
plank for ; and return to James, what James would, if he 
had not lent his plane, then have had ; not a new plane — 
but the worn-out one. James must make a new one for 
himself, as he would have had to do if no William had 
existed ; and if William likes to borrow it again for another 
plank — all is fair. 

That is to say, clearing the story of its nonsense, that 
James makes a plane annually, and sells it to William for 
its proper price, which, in kind, is a new plank. But this 
arrangement has nothing whatever to do with principal, or 
with interest. There are, indeed, many very subtle con- 
ditions involved in any sale ; one among which is the value 
of ideas ; I will explain that value to you in the course of 
time (the article is not one which modern political econo- 
mists have any familiarity with dealings in); and I will tell 
you somewhat also of the real nature of interest ; but if you 
will only get, for the present, a quite clear idea of " the 
Position of William," it is all I want of you. 

I remain, your faithful friend, 

JOHN RUSKIN. 
My next letter, I hope, on ist February. 



190 FORS CLAVIGERA. 



LETTER II. 

Denmark Hill, 1st February 



Friends, 



Before going farther, you may like to know, and ought 
to know, what I mean by the title of these Letters ; and 
why it is in Latin. I can only tell you in part, for the 
letters will be on many things, if I am able to carry out my 
plan in them ; and that title means many things, and is in 
Latin, because I could not have given an English one 
that meant so many. We, indeed, were not till lately a 
loquacious people, nor a useless one ; but the Romans did 
more, and said less, than any other nation that ever lived ; 
and their language is the most heroic ever spoken by men. 

Therefore I wish you to know, at least, some words of 
it, and to recognize what thoughts they stand for. 

Some day, I hope, you may know — and that European 
workmen may know — many words of it ; but even a few 
will be useful. 

Do not smile at my saying so. Of Arithmetic, Geometry, 
and Chemistry, you can know but little, at the utmost ; but 
that little, well learnt, serves you well. And a little Latin, 
well learnt, will serve you also, and in a higher way than 
any of these. 

"Fors" is the best part of three good English words, 
Force, Fortitude, and Fortune. I wish you to know the 
meaning of those three words accurately. 

" Force " (in humanity) means power of doing good 
work. A fool, or a corpse, can do any quantity of mis- 
chief ; but only a wise and strong man, or, with what true 
vital force there is in him, a weak one, can do good. 

''Fortitude" means the power of bearing necessary pain, 
or trial of patience, whether by time, or temptation. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. IQI 

'• Fortune " means the necessary fate of a man : the ordi- 
nance of his life which cannot be changed. To "make 
your Fortune " is to rule that appointed fate to the best 
ends of which it is capable. 

Fors is a feminine word ; and Clavigera is, therefore, the 
feminine of "Claviger." 

Clava means a club. Clavis, a key. Clavus, a nail, or a 
rudder. 

" Gero means "f carry." It is the root of our word 
'•gesture'' (the way you carry yourself); and, in a curious 
bye- way, of "jest." 

Clavigera may mean, therefore, either Club-bearer, Key- 
bearer, or Nail-bearer. 

Each of these three possible meanings of Clavigera cor- 
responds to one of the three meanings of Fors. 

Fors, the Club-bearer, means the strength of Hercules, 
or of Deed. 

Fors, the Key-bearer, means the strength of Ulysses, or 
of Patience. 

Fors, the Nail-bearer, means the strength of Lycurgus, or 
of Faw. 

I will tell you what you may usefully know of those three 
Greek persons in a little time. At present, note only of 
the three powers: 1. That the strength of Hercules is for 
deed, not misdeed ; and that his club — the favorite 
weapon, also, of the Athenian hero Theseus, whose form is 
the best inheritance left to us by the greatest of Greek 
sculptors (it is in the Elgin room of the British Museum, 
and I shall have much to tell you of him — especially how 
he helped Hercules in his utmost need, and how he invented 
mixed vegetable soup) — was for subduing monsters and 
cruel persons, and was of olive-wood. 2. That the Second 
Fors Clavigera is portress at a gate which she cannot open 
till you have waited long ; and that her robe is of the color 



I92 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

of ashes, or dry earth. 1 3. That the Third Fors Clavigera, 
the power of Lycurgus, is Royal as well as Legal ; and 
that the notablest crown yet existing in Europe of any that 
have been worn by Christian kings, was — people say — 
made of a Nail. 

That is enough about my title, for this time ; now to our 
work. I told you, and you will find it true, that, practically, 
all wages mean the food and lodging given you by the 
possessors of the land. 

It begins to be asked on many sides how the possessors 
of the land became possessed of it, and why they should 
still possess it, more than you or I : and Ricardo's " Theory " 
of Rent, though, for an economist, a very creditably ingenious 
work of fiction, will not much longer be imagined to explain 
the " Practice " of Rent. 

The true answer, in this matter, as in all others, is the 
best. Some land has been bought ; some, won by cultiva- 
tion: but the greater part, in Europe, seized originally by 
force of hand. 

You may think, in that case, you may be justified in 
trying to seize some yourselves, in the same way. 

If you could, you, and your children, would only hold it 
by the same title as its present holders. If it is a bad one, 
you had better not so hold it ; if a good one, you had 
better let the present holders alone. 

And in any case, it is expedient that you should do so, 
for the present holders, whom we may generally call 
" Squires " (a title having three meanings, like Fors, and all 
good ; namely, Rider, Shield-bearer, and Carver), are quite 
the best men you can now look to for leading : it is too true 
that they have much demoralized themselves lately by horse- 
racing, bird-shooting, and vermin-hunting ; and most of all 

1 See Carey's translation of the ninth book of Dante's Purgatory, 
line 105. 



FOR? CLAVIGERA. 1 93 

by living in London, instead of on their estates ; but they 
are still without exception brave ; nearly without exception, 
good-natured ; honest, so far as they understand honesty, 
and much to be depended on, if once you and they under- 
stand each other. 

Which you are far enough now from doing ; and it is 
imminently needful that you should; so we will have an 
accurate talk of them soon. The needfullest thing of all 
first is that you should know the functions of the persons 
whom you are being taught to think of as your protectors 
against the Squires; — your "Employers," namely; or 
Capitalist Supporters of Labor. 

" Employers." It is a noble title. If, indeed, they have 
found you idle, and given you employment, wisely, — let us 
no more call them mere " Men " of Business, but rather 
" Angels " of Business : quite the best sort of Guardian Angel. 

Yet are you sure it is necessary, absolutely, to look to 
superior natures for employment ? Is it inconceivable that 
you should employ — yourselves ? I ask the question, 
because these Seraphic beings, undertaking also to be 
Seraphic Teachers or Doctors, have theories about employ- 
ment which may perhaps be true in their own celestial 
regions, but are inapplicable under worldly conditions. 

To one of these principles, announced by themselves as 
highly important, I must call your attention closely, because 
it has of late been the cause of much embarrassment 
among persons in a sub-seraphic life. I take its statement 
verbatim, from the 25th page of the Cambridge catechism 
before quoted: — 

"This brings us to a most important proposition respecting 
capital, one which it is essential that the student should thoroughly 
understand. 

"The proposition is this — A demand for commodities is not a 
demand for labor. 



194 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

" The demand for labor depends upon the amount of capital ; 
the demand for commodities simply determines in what direction 
labor shall be employed. 

" An example. — The truth of these assertions can best be 
shown by examples. Let us suppose that a manufacturer of 
woolen cloth is in the habit of spending 50/. annually in lace. 
What does it matter, say some, whether he spends this 50/. in 
lace or whether he uses it to employ more laborers in his own 
business ? Does not the 50/. spent in lace maintain the laborers 
who make the lace, just the same as it would maintain the laborers 
who make cloth, if the manufacturer used the money in extending 
his own business ? If he ceased buying the lace, for the sake of 
employing more clothmakers, would there not be simply a transfer 
of the 50/. from the lacemakers to the clothmakers ? In order to 
find the right answer to these questions let us imagine what would 
actually take place if the manufacturer ceased buying the lace, 
and employed the 50/. in paying the wages of an additional 
number of clothmakers. The lace manufacturer, in consequence 
of the diminished demand for lace, would diminish the production, 
and would withdraw from his business an amount of capital 
corresponding to the diminished demand. As there is no reason 
to suppose that the lacemaker would, on losing some of his 
custom, become more extravagant, or would cease to desire to 
derive income from the capital which the diminished demand 
has caused him to withdraw from his own business, it may be 
assumed that he would invest this capital in some other industry. 
This capital is not the same as that which his former customer, 
the woollen cloth manufacturer, is now paying his own laborers 
with ; it is a second capital ; and in the place of 50/. employed in 
maintaining labor, there is now 100/. so employed. There is no 
transfer from lacemakers to clothmakers. There is fresh employ- 
ment for the clothmakers and a transfer from the lacemakers to 
some other laborers." — {Principles of Political Eco?iomy, Vol. I, 
p. 102.) 

This is very fine ; and it is clear that we may carry 
forward the improvement in our commercial arrangements 



I ORS CLAVIGEKA. I 95 

by recommending all the other customers of the lacemaker 
to treat him as the clothmaker has done. Whereupon he 
of course leaves the lace business entirely, and uses all his 
capital in " some other industry." Having thus established 
the lacemaker with a complete " second capital,'' in the 
other industry, we will next proceed to develop a capital 
out of the clothmaker, by recommending all his customers 
to leave him. Whereupon, he will also invest his capital in 
" some other industry," and we have a Third capital, 
employed jn a National benefit. 

We will now proceed in the round of all possible busi- 
nesses, developing a correspondent number of new capitals, 
till we come back to our friend the lacemaker again, and 
find him employed in whatever his new industry was. By 
now taking away again all his new customers, we begin 
the development of another order of Capitals in a higher 
Seraphic circle — and so develop at last an Infinite 
Capital ! 

It would be difficult to match this for simplicity; it is 
more comic even than the fable of James and William, 
though you may find it less easy to detect the fallacy here ; 
but the obscurity is not because the error is less gross, but 
because it is threefold. Fallacy ist is the assumption that 
a clothmaker may employ any number of men, whether he 
has customers or not ; while a lacemaker must dismiss his 
men if he has not customers. Fallacy 2d. That when a 
lacemaker can no longer find customers for lace, he can 
always find customers for something else. Fallacy 3d 
(the essential one). That the funds provided by these new 
customers, produced seraphically from the clouds, are a 
"second capital." Those customers, if they exist now, 
existed before the lacemaker adopted his new business ; 
and were the employers of the people in that business. If 
the lacemaker gets them, he merely diverts their fifty 



I96 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

pounds from the tradesmen they were before employing, 
to himself ; and that is Mr. Mill's "second capital." 

Underlying these three fallacies, however, there is, in 
the mind of "the greatest thinker of England," some 
consciousness of a partial truth, which he has never yet 
been able to define for himself- — still less to explain to 
others. The real root of them is his conviction that it 
is beneficial and profitable to make broadcloth ; and 
unbeneficial and unprofitable to make lace; 1 so that the 
trade of clothmaking should be infinitely extended, and 
that of lacemaking infinitely repressed. Which is, indeed, 
partially true. Making cloth, if it be well made, is a good 
industry ; and if you had sense enough to read your Walter 
Scott thoroughly, I should invite you to join me in sincere 
hope that Glasgow might in that industry long flourish ; 
and the chief hostelry at Aberfoil be at the sign of the 
" Nicol Jarvie." Also, of lacemakers, it is often true that 
they had better be doing something else. I admit it, with 
no good will, for I know a most kind lady, a clergyman's 
wife, who devotes her life to the benefit of her country by 
employing lacemakers ; and all her friends make presents 
of collars and cuffs to each other, for the sake of charity ; 
and as, if they did not, the poor girl-lacemakers would 
probably indeed be " diverted " into some other less divert- 
ing industry, in due assertion of the rights of woman, 
(cartridge-filling, or percussion-cap making, most likely) I 
even go the length, sometimes, of furnishing my friend with 
a pattern, and never say a word to disturb her young 
customers in their conviction that it is an act of Christian 
charity to be married in more than ordinarily expensive veils. 

1 I assume the Cambridge quotation to be correct: in my old edition 
(1848), the distinction is between "weavers and lace-makers" and 
"journeymen bricklayers"; and making velvet is considered to be the 
production of a " commodity," but building a house only doing a " ser- 



FORS CLAVIGERA. IQ7 

But there is one kind of lace for which I should be glad 
that the demand ceased. Iron lace. If we must even 
doubt whether ornamental thread-work may be, wisely, 
made on cushions in the sunshine, by dexterous fingers 
for fair shoulders, — how are we to think of Ornamental 
Ironwork, made with deadly sweat of men, and steady 
waste, all summer through, of the coals that Earth gave 
us for winter fuel ? What shall we say of labor spent on 
lace such as that ? 

Nay, says the Cambridge Catechism, " the demand for 
commodities is not a demand for labor." 

Doubtless, in the economist's new earth, cast iron will 
be had for asking ; the hapless and brave Parisians find it 
even rain occasionally out of the new economical Heavens, 
without asking. Gold will also one day, perhaps, be be- 
gotten of gold, until the supply of that, as well as of iron 
may be, at least, equal to the demand. But, in this world, 
it is not so yet. Neither thread-lace, gold-lace, iron-lace, 
nor stone-lace, whether they be commodities or incommodi- 
ties, can be had for nothing. How much, think you, did 
the gilded flourishes cost round the gas-lamps on West- 
minster Bridge ? or the stone-lace of the pinnacles of the 
temple of Parliament at the end of it (incommodious 
enough, as I hear) ; or the point-lace of the park-railings 
which you so improperly pulled down, when you wanted to 
be Parliamentary yourselves ; (much good you would have 
got of that !) or the "openwork" of iron railings generally 
— the special glories of English design? Will you count 
the cost, in labor and coals, of the blank bars ranged along 
all the melancholy miles of our suburban streets, saying 
with their rusty tongues, as plainly as iron tongues can 
speak, " Thieves outside, and nothing to steal within." A 
beautiful wealth they are ! and a productive capital ! "Well 
but," you answer, "the making them was work for us." Of 



I98 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

course it was ; is not that the very thing I am telling you ! 
Work it was ; and too much. But will you be good enough 
to make up your minds, once for all, whether it is really 
work that you want, or rest ? I thought you rather objected 
to your quantity of work ; - — that you were all for having 
eight hours of it instead of ten ? You may have twelve 
instead of ten easily. Sixteen, if you like ! if it is only 
occupation you want, why do you cast the iron ? Forge it 
in the fresh air, on a workman's anvil ; make iron-lace like 
that of Verona, every link of it swinging loose like a knight's 
chain mail: then you may have some joy of it afterwards, 
and pride ; and say you knew the cunning of a man's right 
hand. But I think it is pay that you want, not work ; and 
it is very true that pretty ironwork like that does not pay ; 
but it is pretty, and it might even be entertaining, if you 
made those leaves at the top of it (which are, as far as I 
can see, only artichoke, and not very well done) in the 
likeness of all the beautiful leaves you could find, till you 
knew them all by heart. " Wasted time and hammer- 
strokes," say you? "A wise people like the English will 
have nothing but spikes ; and besides, the spikes are 
highly needful, so many of the wise people being thieves." 
Yes, that is so ; and, therefore, in calculating the annual 
cost of keeping your thieves, you must always reckon, not 
only the cost of the spikes that keep them in, but of the 
spikes that keep them out. But how if, instead of flat 
rough spikes, you put triangular polished ones, commonly 
called bayonets ; and instead of the perpendicular bars put 
perpendicular men ? What is the cost to you then, of your 
railing, of which you must feed the idle bars daily ? Costly 
enough, if it stays quiet. But how, if it begin to inarch and 
countermarch ? and apply its spikes horizontally ? 

And now note this that follows ; it is of vital importance 
to you. 



I ORS CLAVIGERA. 199 

There are, practically, two absolutely opposite kinds of 
labor going on among men, forever. 1 

The first, labor supported by Capital, producing nothing. 

The second, labor unsupported by Capital, producing all 
things. 

Take two simple and precise instances on a small scale. 

A little while since, I was paying a visit in Ireland, and 
chanced to hear an account of the pleasures of a picnic 
party, who had gone to see a waterfall. There was of 
course ample lunch, feasting on the grass, and basketsful 
of fragments taken up afterwards. 

Then the company, feeling themselves dull, gave the 
fragments that remained to the attendant ragged boys, on 
condition that they should " pull each other's hair." 

Here, you see, is, in the most accurate sense, employment 
of food, or capital, in the support of entirely unproductive 
labor. 

Next, for the second kind. I live at the top of a short 
but rather steep hill ; at the bottom of which, every day, all 
the year round, but especially in frost, coal-wagons get 
stranded, being economically provided with the smallest 
number of horses that can get them along on level ground. 

The other day, when the road, frozen after thaw, was at 
the worst, my assistant was coming up here, and found 
three coal-wagons at a lock, helpless ; the drivers, as usual, 
explaining Political Economy to the horses, by beating them 
over the heads. 

There were half-a-dozen fellows besides, out of work, or 
not caring to be in it — standing by, looking on. My 

1 I do not mean that there are no other kinds, nor that well-paid labor 
must necessarily be unproductive. I hope to see much done, some day, 
for just pay, and wholly productive. But these, named in the text, are 
two opposite extremes ; and, in actual life hitherto, the largest means 
have been usually spent in mischief, and the most useful work done for 
the worst pay. 



200 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

engraver put his shoulder to a wheel (at least his hand to 
a spoke), and called on the idlers to do as much. They 
didn't seem to have thought of such a thing, but were ready 
enough when called on. "And we went up screaming," 
said Mr. Burgess. 

Do you suppose that was one whit less proper human 
work than going up a hill against a battery, merely because, 
in that case, half of the men would have gone down, scream- 
ing, instead of up ; and those who got up would have done 
no good at the top ? 

But observe the two opposite kinds of labor. The first, 
lavishly supported by Capital, and producing Nothing. The 
second, unsupported by any Capital whatsoever, — not having 
so much as a stick for a tool, — but, called by mere good-will, 
out of the vast void of the world's Idleness, and producing 
the definitely profitable result of moving a weight of fuel 
some distance towards the place where it was wanted, and 
sparing the strength of over-loaded creatures. 

Observe further. The labor producing no useful result 
was demoralizing. All such labor is. 

The labor producing useful results was educational in its 
influence on the temper. All such labor is. 

And the first condition of education, the thing you are all 
crying out for, is being put to wholesome and useful work. 
And it is nearly the last condition of it, too ; you need very 
little more ; but, as things go, there will yet be difficulty in 
getting that. As things have hitherto gone, the difficulty 
has been to avoid getting the reverse of that. 

For, during the last eight hundred years, the upper classes 
of Europe have been one large Picnic Party. Most of them 
have been religious also ; and in sitting down, by companies, 
upon the green grass, in parks, gardens, and the like, have 
considered themselves commanded into that position by 
Divine authority, and fed with bread from Heaven : of 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 201 

which they duly considered it proper to bestow the frag- 
ments in support, and the tithes in tuition, of the poor. 

But, without even such small cost, they might have taught 
the poor many beneficial things. In some places, they have 
taught them manners, which is already much. They might 
have cheaply taught them merriment also: — dancing and 
singing, for instance. The young English ladies who sit 
nightly to be instructed, themselves, at some cost, in melo- 
dies illustrative of the consumption of La Traviata, and the 
damnation of Don Juan, might have taught every girl peas- 
ant in England to join in costless choirs of innocent song. 
Here and there, perhaps, a gentleman might have been 
found able to teach his peasantry some science and art. 
Science and fine art don't pay ; but they cost little. Tithes 
— not of the income of the country, but of the income, say, 
of its brewers — nay, probably the sum devoted annually by 
England to provide drugs for the adulteration of its own 
beer — would have founded lovely little museums, and 
perfect libraries, in every village. And if, here and there, 
an English churchman had been found (such as Dean 
Stanley) willing to explain to peasants the sculpture of his 
and their own cathedral, and to read its black-letter inscrip- 
tions for them ; and, on warm Sundays, when they were too 
sleepy to attend to anything more proper — to tell them a 
story about some of the people who had built it, or lay 
buried in it — we perhaps might have been quite as religious 
as we are, and yet need not now have been offering prizes 
for competition in art schools, nor lecturing with tender 
sentiment on the inimitableness of the works of Fra 
Angelico. 

These things the great Picnic Party might have taught 
without cost, and with amusement to themselves. One 
thing, at least, they were bound to teach, whether it amused 
them or not; — how, day by day, the daily bread they 



202 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

expected their village children to pray to God for, might be 
earned in accordance with the laws of God. This they 
might have taught, not only without cost, but with great 
gain. One thing only they Have taught, and at considerable 
cost. 

They have spent four hundred millions 1 of pounds here 
in England within the last twenty years! — how much in 
France and Germany, I will take some pains to ascertain for 
you, — and with this initial outlay of capital, have taught 
the peasants of Europe — to pull each other's hair. 

With this result, 17th January, 187 1, at and around the 
chief palace of their own pleasures, and the chief city of 
their delights : — 

" Each demolished house has its own legend of sorrow, of pain, 
and horror ; each vacant doorway speaks to the eye, and almost 
to the ear, of hasty flight, as armies or fire came — of weeping 
women and trembling children running away in awful fear, aban- 
doning the home that saw their birth, the old house they loved — 
of startled men seizing quickly under each arm their most valued 
goods, and rushing, heavily laden, after their wives and babes, 
leaving to hostile hands the task of burning all the rest. When 
evening falls, the wretched outcasts, worn with fatigue and tears, 
reach Versailles, St. Germain, or some other place outside the 
range of fire, and there they beg for bread and shelter, homeless, 
foodless, broken with despair. And this, remember, has been the 
fate of something like a hundred thousand people during the last 
four months. Versailles alone has about fifteen thousand such 
fugitives to keep alive, all ruined, all hopeless, all vaguely asking 
the grim future what still worse fate it may have in store for 
them." — Daily Telegraph, Jan. 17th, 1871. 

1 ^992, 740,328, in seventeen years, say the working men of Burnley, 
in their address just issued — an excellent address in its way, and full of 
very fair arithmetic — if its facts are all right ; only I don't see, myself, 
how " from fifteen to twenty-five millions per annum," make nine hun- 
dred and ninety-two millions in seventeen years. 



FORS CLAV1GERA. 203 

That is the result round their pleasant city, and this 
within their industrious and practical one : let us keep for 
the reference of future ages, a picture of domestic life, out 
of the streets of London in her commercial prosperity, 
founded on the eternal laws of Supply and Demand, as 
applied by the modern Capitalist: — 

"A father in the last stage of consumption — two daughters 
nearly marriageable with hardly sufficient rotting clothing to 
'cover their shame.' The rags that hang around their attenuated 
frames flutter in strips against their naked legs. They have no 
stool or chair upon which they can sit. Their father occupies the 
only stool in the room. They have no employment by which they 
can earn even a pittance. They are at home starving on a half- 
chance meal a day, and hiding their raggedness from the world. 
The walls are bare, there is one bed in the room, and a bundle of 
dirty rags are upon it. The dying father will shortly follow the 
dead mother, and when the parish coffin encloses his wasted form, 
and a pauper's grave closes above him, what shall be his daugh- 
ters' lot? This is but a type of many other homes in the district : 
dirt, misery, and disease alone flourish in that wretched neighbor- 
hood. 'Fever and small-pox rage,' as the inhabitants say, 'next 
door, and next door, and over the way, and next door to that, 
and further down.' The living, dying, and dead are all huddled 
together. The houses have no ventilation, the back yards are 
receptacles for all sorts of filth and rubbish, the old barrels or 
vessels that contain the supply of water are thickly coated on the 
sides with slime, and there is an undisturbed deposit of mud at the 
bottom. There is no mortuary house — the dead lie in the dog- 
holes where they breathed their last, and add to the contagion 
which spreads through the neighborhood." — Pall Mall Gazette, 
January 7th, 1871, quoting the Builder. 

As I was revising this sheet, — on the evening of the 20th 
of last month, — two slips of paper were brought to me. 
One contained, in consecutive paragraphs, an extract from 
the speech of one of the best and kindest of our public 



204 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

men, to the 'Liberal Association" at Portsmouth; and an 
account of the performances of the 35-ton gun called the 
"Woolwich Infant," which is fed with 700 pound shot, and 
130 pounds of gunpowder at one mouthful; not at all like 
the Wapping infants, starving on a half-chance meal a day. 
"The gun was fired with the most satisfactory result," 
nobody being hurt, and nothing damaged but the platform, 
while the shot passed through the screens in front at the 
rate of 1,303 feet per second; and it seems, also, that the 
Woolwich infant has not seen the light too soon. For Mr. 
Cowper-Temple, in the preceding paragraph, informs the 
Liberals of Portsmouth, that in consequence of our amiable 
neutrality, "we must contemplate the contingency of a 
combined fleet coming from the ports of Prussia, Russia, 
and America, and making an attack on England." 

Contemplating myself these relations of Russia, Prussia, 
Woolwich, and Wapping, it seems to my uncommercial mind 
merely like another case of iron railings — thieves outside, 
and nothing to steal within. But the second slip of paper 
announced approaching help in a peaceful direction. It 
was the prospectus of the Boardmen's and General Adver- 
tising Cooperative Society, which invites, from the "gener- 
osity of the public, a necessary small preliminary sum," 
and, " in addition to the above, a small sum of money by 
way of capital," to set the members of the society up in 
the profitable business of walking about London between 
two boards. Here is at last found for us, then, it appears, 
a line of life ! At the West End, lounging about the 
streets, with a well-made back to one's coat, and front to 
one's shirt, is usually thought of as not much in the way of 
business ; but, doubtless, to lounge at the East End about 
the streets, with one Lie pinned to the front of you, and 
another to the back of you, will pay, in time, only with 
proper preliminary expenditure of capital. My friends, I 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 205 

repeat my question : Do you not think you could contrive 
little method of employing — yourselves? for truly I 
think the Seraphic Doctors are nearly at their wits' end (if 
ever their wits had a beginning). Tradesmen are beginning 
to find it difficult to live by lies of their own ; and workmen 
will not find it much easier to live, by walking about, 
flattened between other people's. 

Think over it. On the first of March, I hope to ask you 
to read a little history with me ; perhaps, also, because the 
world's time, seen truly, is but one long and fitful April, in 
which every day is All Fools' day, — we may continue our 
studies in that month ; but on the first of May, you shall 
consider with me what you can do, or let me, if still living, 
tell you what I know you can do — those of you, at least, 
who will promise — (with the help of the three strong 
Fates) these three things : — 

i. To do your own work well, whether it be for life or 
death. 

2. To help other people at theirs, when you can, and 
seek to avenge no injury. 

3. To be sure you can obey good laws before you seek 
to alter bad ones. 

Believe me, your faithful friend, 

JOHN RUSKIN. 



LETTER III. 

Denmark Hill, 1st March, 187 1. 
My Friends, — 

We are to read — with your leave — some history to-day; 
the leave, however, will perhaps not willingly be given, for 
you may think that of late you have read enough history, or 
too much, in Gazettes of morning and evening. No ; you 



206 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

have read, and can read, no history in these. Reports of 
daily events, yes ; — and if any journal would limit itself to 
statements of well-sifted fact, making itself not a "news" 
paper, but an "olds" paper, and giving its statements 
tested and true, like old wine, as soon as things could be 
known accurately ; choosing also, of the many things that 
might be known, those which it was most vital to know, and 
summing them in few words of pure English, — I cannot 
say whether it would ever pay well to sell it ; but I am sure 
it would pay well to read it, and to read no other. 

But even so, to know only what was happening day by 
day, would not be to read history. What happens now is 
but the momentary scene of a great play, of which you can 
understand nothing without some knowledge of the former 
action. And of that, so great a play is it, you can at best 
understand little ; yet of history, as of science, a little, well 
known, will serve you much, and a little, ill known, will do 
you fatally the contrary of service. 

For instance, all your journals will be full of talk, for 
months to come, about whose fault the war was ; and you 
yourselves, as you begin to feel its deadly recoil on your 
own interests, or as you comprehend better the misery it has 
brought on others, will be looking about more and more 
restlessly for some one to accuse of it. That is because 
you don't know the law of Fate, nor the course of history. 
It is the law of Fate that we shall live, in part, by our own 
efforts, but in the greater part, by the help of others ; and 
that we shall also die, in part, for our own faults ; but in the 
greater part, for the faults of others. Do you suppose (to 
take the thing on the small scale in which you can test it) 
that those seven children torn into pieces out of their sleep, 
in the last night of the siege of Paris, 1 had sinned above all 
the children in Paris, or above yours ? or that their parents 

1 Daily Telegraph, 30th January, 187 1. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 207 

had sinned more than you? Do you think the thousands 
of soldiers, German and French, who have died in agony, 
and of women who have died of grief, had sinned above 
all other soldiers, or mothers, or girls, there and here? 

It was not their fault, but their Fate. The thing ap- 
pointed to them by the Third Fors. But you think it was 
at least the Emperor Napoleon's fault, if not theirs? Or 
Count Bismarck's? No; not at all. The Emperor Napo- 
leon had no more to do with it than a cork on the top of a 
wave has with the toss of the sea. Count Bismarck had 
very little to do with it. When the Count sent for my 
waiter, last July, in the village of Lauterbrunnen, among the 
Alps, — that the waiter then and there packed his knapsack 
and departed, to be shot, if need were, leaving my dinner 
unserved (as has been the case with many other people's 
dinners since), — depended on things much anterior to 
Count Bismarck. The two men who had most to answer 
for in the mischief of the matter were St. Louis and his 
brother, who lived in the middle of the thirteenth century. 
One, among the very best of men ; and the other, of all that 
I ever read of, the worst. The good man, living in mis- 
taken effort, and dying miserably, to the ruin of his 
country ; the bad man, living in triumphant good fortune, 
and dying peaceably, to the ruin of many countries. Such 
were their Fates, and ours. I am not going to tell you of 
them, nor anything about the French war to-day ; and you 
have been told, long ago (only you would not listen, nor 
believe), the root of the modern German power — in that 
rough father of Frederick, who "yearly made his country 
richer, and this not in money alone (which is of very un- 
certain value, and sometimes has no value at all, and even 
less), but in frugality, diligence, punctuality, veracity, — 
the grand fountains from which money, and all real values 
and valors, spring for men. As a Nation's Husband, he 



208 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

seeks his fellow among Kings, ancient and modern. Happy 
the nation which gets such a Husband, once in the half 
thousand years. The Nation, as foolish wives and Nations 
do, repines and grudges a good deal, its weak whims and 
will being thwarted very often ; but it advances steadily, 
with consciousness or not, in the way of well-doing ; and, 
after long times, the harvest of this diligent sowing becomes 
manifest to the Nation, and to all Nations." 1 

No such harvest is sowing for you, — Freemen and Inde- 
pendent Electors of Parliamentary representatives, as you 
think yourselves. 

Freemen, indeed ! You are slaves, not to masters of any 
strength or honor, but to the idlest talkers at that floral 
end of Westminster bridge. Nay, to countless meaner 
masters than they. For though, indeed, as early as the 
year 1102, it was decreed in a council at St. Peter's, West- 
minster, " that no man for the future should presume to 
carry on the wicked trade of selling men in the markets, 
like brute beasts, which hitherto hath been the common 
custom of England," the no less wicked trade of under- 
selling men in markets has lasted to this day ; producing 
conditions of slavery differing from the ancient ones only in 
being starved instead of full-fed: and besides this, a state 
of slavery unheard of among the nations till now, has arisen 
with us. In all former slaveries, Egyptian, Algerine, Saxon, 
and American, the slave's complaint has been of compulsory 
work. But the modern Politico-Economic slave is a new 
and far more injured species, condemned to compulsory 
Idleness, for fear he should spoil other people's trade ; 
the beautifully logical condition of the national Theory of 
Economy in this matter being that, if you are a shoemaker, 
it is a law of Heaven that you must sell your goods under 
their price, in order to destroy the trade of other shoe- 

1 Carlyle's Frederick, Book IV, chap. iii. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 20Q 

makers ; but if you are mot a shoemaker, and are going 
shoeless and lame, it is a law of Heaven that you must not 
cut yourself a bit of cowhide to put between your foot and 
the stones, because that would interfere with the total trade 
of shoemaking. 

Which theory, of all the wonderful — ! 



Wc will wait till April to consider of it ; meantime, here 
is a note I have received from Mr. Alsager A. Hill, who 
having been unfortunately active in organizing that new 
effort in the advertising business, designed, as it seems, on 
this loveliest principle of doing nothing that will be peril- 
ously productive — was hurt by my manner of mention of it 
in the last number of Fors. I offered accordingly to print 
any form of remonstrance he would furnish me with, if 
laconic enough ; and he writes to me, "The intention of the 
Boardmen's Society is not, as the writer of Fors Clavigera 
suggests, to ' find a line of life ' for able-bodied laborers, but 
simply, by means of cooperation, to give them the fullest 
benefit of their labor whilst they continue a very humble 
but still remunerative calling. The capital asked for to 
start the organization is essential in all industrial partner- 
ships, and in so poor a class of labor as that of street 
board-carrying could not be supplied by the men them- 
selves. With respect to the 'lies' alleged to be carried 
in front and behind, it is rather hard measure to say that 
mere announcements of public meetings or places of enter- 
tainments (of which street notices chiefly consist) are neces- 
sarily falsehoods." 

To which I have only to reply that I never said the 
newly-found line of life was meant for able-bodied persons. 
The distinction between able and unable-bodied men is 
entirely indefinite. There are all degrees of ability for 



2IO FORS CLAVIGERA. 

all things ; and a man who can do anything, however little, 
should be made to do that little usefully. If you can carry 
about a board with a bill on it, you can carry, not about, 
but where it is wanted, a board without a bill on it ; which is 
a much more useful exercise of your inability. Respecting 
the general probity, and historical or descriptive accuracy, 
of advertisements, and their function in modern economy, I 
will inquire in another place. You see I use none for this 
book, and shall in future use none for any of my books ; 
having grave objection even to the very small minority of 
advertisements which are approximately true. I am correct- 
ing this sheet in the "Crown and Thistle" inn at Abingdon, 
and under my window is a shrill-voiced person, slowly pro- 
gressive, crying "Soles, three pair for a shillin'." In a 
market regulated by reason and order, instead of demand 
and supply, the soles would neither have been kept long 
enough to render such advertisement of them necessary, 
nor permitted after their inexpedient preservation, to be 
advertised. 

Of all attainable liberties, then, be sure first to strive for 
leave to be useful. Independence you had better cease to 
talk of, for you are dependent not only on every act of 
people whom you never heard of, who are living round you, 
but on every past act of what has been dust for a thousand 
years. So, also, does the course of a thousand years to 
come, depend upon the little perishing strength that is in 
you. 

Little enough, and perishing, often without reward, how- 
ever well spent. Understand that. Virtue does not consist 
in doing what will be presently paid, or even paid at all, to 
you, the virtuous person. It may so chance ; or may not. 
It will be paid, some day ; but the vital condition of it, as 
virtue, is that it shall be content in its own deed, and 
desirous rather that the pay of it, if any, should be for 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 2 1 I 

others ; just as it is also the vital condition of vice to be 
content in its own deed, and desirous that the pay thereof, 
if any, should be to others. 

You have probably heard of St. Louis before now: and 
perhaps also that he built the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, of 
which you may have seen that I wrote the other day to the 
Telegraphy as being the most precious piece of Gothic in 
Northern Europe ; but you are not likely to have known 
that the spire of it was Tenterden steeple over again, and 
the cause of fatal sands many, quick, and slow, and above 
ill, of the running of these in the last hour-glass of France ; 
Eor that spire, and others like it, subordinate, have acted 
ever since as lightning-rods, in a reverse manner ; carrying, 
not the fire of heaven innocently to earth, but electric fire of 
earth innocently to heaven, leaving us all, down here, cold. 
The best virtue and heart-fire of France (not to say of 
England, who building her towers for the most part with 
four pinnacles instead of one, in a* somewhat quadrumanous 
type, finds them less apt as conductors), have spent them- 
selves for these past six centuries in running up those 
steeples and off them, nobody knows where, leaving a " holy 
Republic " as residue at the bottom ; helpless, clay-cold, 
and croaking, a habitation of frogs, which poor Garibaldi 
fights for, vainly raging against the ghost of St. Louis. 

It is of English ghosts, however, that I fain would tell you 
somewhat to-day ; of them, and of the land they haunt, and 
know still for theirs. For hear this to begin with : — 

" While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh 
century is useless for modern purposes, and looks like the 
picture of another region, a map of England proper in the 
reign of Victoria hardly differs at all from a map of England 
proper in the reign of William" (the Conqueror). So says, 
very truly, Mr. Freeman in his History of the Cotiqucst. Are 
there any of you who care for this old England, of which the 



2 12 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

map has remained unchanged for so long ? I believe you 
would care more for her, and less for yourselves, except as 
her faithful children, if you knew a little more about her ; 
and especially more of what she has been. The difficulty, 
indeed, at any time, is in finding out what she has been ; 
for that which people usually call her history is not hers at 
all ; but that of her Kings, or the tax-gatherers employed 
by them, which is as if people were to call Mr. Gladstone's 
history, or Mr. Lowe's, yours and mine. 

But the history even of her Kings is worth reading. You 
remember, I said, that sometimes in church it might keep 
you awake to be told a little of it. For a simple instance, 
you have heard probably of Absalom's rebellion against his 
father, and of David's agony at his death, until, from very 
weariness, you have ceased to feel the power of the story. 
You would not feel it less vividly if you knew that a far 
more fearful sorrow, of the like kind, had happened to one 
of your own Kings, perhaps the best we have had, take him 
for all in all. Not one only, but three of his sons, rebelled 
against him, and were urged into rebellion by their mother. 
The Prince, who should have been King after him, was 
pardoned, not once, but many times — pardoned wholly, 
with rejoicing over him as over the dead alive, and set at 
his father's right hand in the kingdom ; but all in vain. 
Hard and treacherous to the heart's core, nothing wins him, 
nothing warns, nothing binds. He flies to France, and wars 
at last alike against father and brother, till, falling sick 
through mingled guilt, and shame, and rage, he repents idly 
as the fever-fire withers him. His father sends him the 
signet ring from his finger in token of one more forgiveness. 
The Prince lies down on a heap of ashes with a halter round 
his neck, and so dies. When his father heard it he fainted 
away three times, and then broke out into bitterest crying 
and tears. This, you would have thought enough for the 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 213 

I hud d.irk Fate to have appointed for a man's sorrows. It 
was little to that which was to come. His second son, who 
was now his Prince of England, conspired against him, and 
pursued his father from city to city, in Norman France. At 
last, even his youngest son, best beloved of all, abandoned 
him, and went over to his enemies. 

This was enough. Between him and his children, Heaven 
commanded its own peace. He sickened and died of grief 
on the 6th of July, 1189. 

The son who had killed him, " repented " now ; but there 
could be no signet ring sent to him. Perhaps the dead do 
not forgive. Men say, as he stood by his father's corpse, 
that the blood burst from its nostrils. One child only had 
been faithful to him, but he was the son of a girl whom he 
had loved much, and as he should not ; his Queen, there- 
fore, being a much older person, and strict upon proprieties, 
poisoned her ; nevertheless poor Rosamond's son never 
failed him ; won a battle for him in England, which, in all 
human probability, saved his kingdom ; and was made a 
bishop, and turned out a bishop of the best. 

You know already a little about the Prince who stood 
unforgiven (as it seemed) by his father's body. He, also, 
had to forgive, in his time ; but only a stranger's arrow shot 
— not those reversed " arrows in the hand of the giant," by 
which his father died. Men called him " Lion-heart," not 
untruly ; and the English, as a people, have prided them- 
selves somewhat ever since on having, every man of them, 
the heart of a lion ; without inquiring particularly either 
what sort of a heart a lion has, or whether to have the heart 
of a lamb might not sometimes be more to the purpose. 
But it so happens that the name was very justly given to 
this prince ; and I want you to study his character some- 
what, with me, because in all our history there is no truer 
representative of one great species of the British squire, 



214 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

under all the three significances of the name ; for this 
Richard of ours was beyond most of his fellows, a Rider 
and a Shieldbearer ; and beyond all men of his day, a 
Carver ; and in disposition an /treasonable exercise of 
intellectual power, typically a Squire altogether. 

Note of him first, then, that he verily desired the good of 
his people (provided it could be contrived without any check 
of his own humor), and that he saw his way to it a great deal 
clearer than any of your squires do now. Here are some of 
his laws for you : — 

" Having set forth the great inconveniences arising from 
the diversity of weights and measures in different parts of 
the kingdom, he, by a law, commanded all measures of corn, 
and other dry goods, as also of liquors, to be exactly the 
same in all his dominions ; and that the rim of each of these 
measures should be a circle of iron. By another law, he 
commanded all cloth to be woven two yards in breadth 
within the lists, and of equal goodness in all parts ; and 
that all cloth which did not answer this description should 
be seized and burnt. He enacted, further, that all the coin 
of the kingdom should be exactly of the same weight and 
fineness ; — that no Christian should take any interest for 
money lent ; and, to prevent the extortions of the Jews, he 
commanded that all compacts between Christians and Jews 
should be made in the presence of witnesses, and the con- 
ditions of them put in writing." So, you see, in Coeur-de- 
Lion's day, it was not esteemed of absolute necessity to put 
agreements between Christians in writing ! Which if it were 
not now, you know we might save a great deal of money, and 
discharge some of our workmen round Temple Bar as well 
as from Woolwich Dockyards. Note also that bit about 
interest of money also for future reference. In the next 
place, observe that this King had great objection to thieves 
— at least to any person whom he clearly comprehended to 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 2 I 5 

be a thief. He was the inventor of a mode of treatment 
which I believe the Americans — among whom it has not 
fallen altogether into disuse — do not gratefully enough 
recognize as a Monarchical institution. By the last of the 
laws for the government of his fleet in his expedition to 
Palestine, it is decreed, — " That whoever is convicted of 
theft shall have his head shaved, melted pitch poured upon 
it, and the feathers from a pillow shaken over it, that he 
may be known ; and shall be put on shore on the first 
land which the ship touches." And not only so ; he even 
objected to any theft by misrepresentation or deception, — 
for being evidently particularly interested, like Mr. Mill, in 
that cloth manufacture, and having made the above law 
about the breadth of the web, which has caused it to be 
spoken of ever since as "Broad Cloth," and besides, for 
better preservation of its breadth, enacted that the Ell shall 
be of the same length all over the kingdom, and that it shall 
be made of iron — (so that Mr. Tennyson's provision for 
National defenses — that every shop-boy should strike with 
his cheating yard-wand home, would be mended much by 
the substitution of King Richard's honest ell-wand, and for 
once with advisable encouragement to the iron trade) — 
King Richard finally declares — " That it shall be of the 
same goodness in the middle as at the sides, and that no 
merchant in any part of the kingdom of England shall 
stretch before his shop or booth a red or black cloth, or 
any other thing by which the sight of buyers is frequently 
deceived in the choice of good cloth." 

These being Richard's rough and unreasonable, chancing 
nevertheless, being wholly honest, to be wholly right, notions 
of business, the next point you are to note in him is his 
unreasonable good humor ; an eminent character of English 
Squires ; a very lovable one ; and available to himself and 
others in many ways, but not altogether so exemplary as 



2l6 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

many think it. If you are unscrupulously resolved, when- 
ever you can get your own way, to take it ; if you are in a 
position of life wherein you can get a good deal of it, and if 
you have pugnacity enough to enjoy fighting with anybody 
who will not give it you, there is little reason why you 
should ever be out of humor, unless indeed your way is a 
broad one, wherein you are like to be opposed in force. 
Richard's way was a very narrow one. To be first in battle 
(generally obtaining that main piece of his will without 
question ; once only worsted, by a French knight, and 
then, not at all good-humoredly), to be first in recognized 
command ■ — therefore contending with his father, who was 
both in wisdom and acknowledged place superior ; but 
scarcely contending at all with his brother John, who was 
as definitely and deeply beneath him ; good-humored unrea- 
sonably, while he was killing his father, the best of kings, 
and letting his brother rule unresisted, who was among the 
worst ; and only proposing for his object in life to enjoy 
himself everywhere in a chivalrous, poetical, and pleasantly 
animal manner, as a strong man always may. What should 
he have been out of humor for? That he brightly and 
bravely lived through his captivity is much indeed to his 
honor ; but it was his point of honor to be bright and 
brave ; not at all to take care of his kingdom. A king 
who cared for that, would have got thinner and sadder in 
prison. 

And it remains true of the English squire to this day, 
that, for the most part, he thinks that his kingdom is given 
him that he may be bright and brave ; and not at all that 
the sunshine or valor in him is meant to be of use to his 
kingdom. 

But the next point you have to note in Richard is indeed 
a very noble quality, and true English ; he always does as 
much of his work as he can with his own hands. He was 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 217 

not in any wise a king who would sit by a wind-mill to 
watch his son and his men at work, though brave kings 
have done so. As much as might be, of whatever had to 
be done, he would steadfastly do from his own shoulder ; 
his main tool being an old Greek one, and the working God 
Vulcan's — the clearing axe. When that was no longer 
needful, and nothing would serve but spade and trowel, 
still the king was foremost ; and after the weary retreat to 
Ascalon, when he found the place "so completely ruined 
and deserted, that it afforded neither food, lodging, nor 
protection," nor any other sort of capital, — forthwith, 
20th January, 1192 — his army and he set to work to 
repair it ; a three months' business, of incessant toil, 
"from which the king himself was not exempted, but 
wrought with greater ardor than any common laborer." 

The next point of his character is very English also, but 
less honorably so. I said but now that he had a great ob- 
jection to anybody whom he clearly comprehended to be a 
thief. But he had great difficulty in reaching anything like 
an abstract definition of thieving, such as would include 
every method of it, and every culprit, which is an incapacity 
very common to many of us to this day. For instance, he 
carried off a great deal of treasure which belonged to his 
father, from Chinon (the royal treasury-town in France), and 
fortified his own castles in Pcitou with it ; and when he 
wanted money to go crusading with, sold the royal castles, 
manors, woods, and forests, and even the superiority of the 
down of England over the kingdom of Scotland, which his 
father had wrought hard for, for about a hundred thousand 
pounds. Nay, the highest honors and most important offices 
become venal under him ; and from a Princess's dowry to a 
Saracen caravan, nothing comes much amiss : not but that 
lie reives generously also ; whole ships at a time when he is 
in the humor ; but his main practice is getting and spending, 



2l8 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

never saving ; which covetousness is at last the death of him. 
For hearing that a considerable treasure of ancient coins and 
medals has been found in the lands of Vidomar, Viscount of 
Limoges, King Richard sends forthwith to claim this waif 
for himself. The Viscount offers him part only, presumably 
having an antiquarian turn of mind. Whereupon Richard 
loses his temper, and marches forthwith with some Brabant 
men, mercenaries, to besiege the Viscount in his castle of 
Chalus ; proposing, first, to possess himself of the antique 
and otherwise interesting coin in the castle, and then, on his 
general principle of objection to thieves, to hang the garri- 
son. The garrison, on this, offer to give up the antiquities 
if they may march off themselves ; but Richard declares that 
nothing will serve but they must all be hanged. Whereon 
the siege proceeding by rule, and Richard looking, as usual, 
into matters with his own eyes, and going too near the 
walls, an arrow well meant, though half spent, pierces the 
strong white shoulder ; — the shield-bearing one, carelessly 
forward above instead of under shield ; or perhaps, rather, 
when he was afoot, shieldless, engineering. He finishes his 
work, however, though the scratch teases him ; plans his 
assault, carries his castle, and duly hangs his garrison, all 
but the archer, whom in his royal unreasoning way he thinks 
better of, for the well-spent arrow. But he pulls it out im- 
patiently, and the head of it stays in the fair flesh ; a little 
surgery follows ; not so skillful as the archery of those days, 
and the lion heart is appeased — 

Sixth April, 1199. 

We will pursue our historical studies, if you please, in that 
month of the present year. But I wish, in the meantime, 
you would observe, and meditate on, the quite Anglican 
character of Richard, to his death. 

It might have been remarked to him, on his projecting 
the expedition to Chalus, that there were not a few Roman 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 2ig 

coins, and other antiquities, to be found in his own kingdom 
of England, without fighting for them, by mere spade-labor 
and other innocuous means; — that even the brightest new 
money was obtainable from his loyal people in almost any 
quantity for civil asking, and that the same loyal people, en- 
couraged and protected, and above all, kept clean-handed, 
in the arts, by their king, might produce treasures more 
covetable than any antiquities. 

"No"; Richard would have answered, — "that is all 
hypothetical and visionary ; here is a pot of coin presently 
to be had — no doubt about it — inside the walls here : — 
let me once get hold of that, and then," — 



That is what we English call being " Practical." 
Believe me, faithfully yours, 

JOHN RUSKIN. 



My Friends, 



LETTER IV. 

Denmark Hill, \st April, 1871 



It cannot but be pleasing to us to reflect, this day, that 
if we are often foolish enough to talk English without 
understanding it, we are often wise enough to talk Latin 
without knowing it. For this month retains its pretty 
Roman name, and means the month of Opening ; of the 
light in the days and the life in the leaves, and of the voices 
of birds, and of the hearts of men. 

And being the month of Manifestation, it is preeminently 
the month of Fools ; - — for under the beatific influences of 
moral sunshine, or education, the Fools always come out 
first. 



220 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

But what is less pleasing to reflect upon, this spring 
morning, is, that there are some kinds of education which 
may be described, not as moral sunshine, but as moral 
moonshine ; and that, under these, Fools come out both 
First — and Last. 

We have, it seems, now set our opening hearts much on 
this one point, that we will have education for all men and 
women now, and for all boys and girls that are to be. 
Nothing, indeed, can be more desirable, if only we 
determine also what kind of education we are to have. It 
is taken for granted that any education must be good ; — 
that the more of it we get, the better ; that bad education 
only means little education ; and that the worst thing we 
have to fear is getting none. Alas, that is not at all so. 
Getting no education is by no means the worst thing that 
can happen to us. One of the pleasantest friends I ever 
had in my life was a Savoyard guard, who could only read 
with difficulty, and write, scarcely intelligibly, and by great 
effort. He knew no language but his own — no science, 
except as much practical agriculture as served him to till his 
fields. But he was, without exception, one of the happiest 
persons, and, on the whole, one of the best, I have ever 
known ; and. after lunch, when he had had his half bottle 
of Savoy wine, he would generally, as we walked up some 
quiet alley in the afternoon light, give me a little lecture on 
philosophy ; and after I had fatigued and provoked him 
with less cheerful views of the world than his own, he 
would fall back to my servant behind me, and console 
himself with a shrug of the shoulders, and a whispered 
" Le pauvre enfant, il ne sait pas vivre ! " — ("The poor 
child, he doesn't know how to live.") 

No, my friends, believe me, it is not the going without 
education at all that we have most to dread. The real 
thing to be feared is getting a bad one. There are all 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 221 

sorts — good, and very good; bad, and very bad. The 
children of rich people often get the worst education that is 
to be had for money ; the children of the poor often get the 
best for nothing. And you have really these two things 
now to decide for yourselves in England before you can 
take one quite safe practical step in the matter, namely, 
first, what a good education is ; and, secondly, who is likely 
to give it to you. 

What it is ? " Everybody knows that," I suppose you 
would most of you answer. " Of course — to be taught to 
read and write, and cast accounts ; and to learn geography, 
and geology, and astronomy, and chemistry, and German, 
and French, and Italian, and Latin, and Greek, and the 
aboriginal Aryan language." 

Well, when you have learned all that, what would you 
do next ? " Next ? Why then we should be perfectly 
happy, and make as much money as ever we liked, and we 
would turn out our toes before any company." I am not 
sure myself, and I don't think you can be, of any one of 
these three things. At least, as to making you very happy, 
I know something, myself, of nearly all these matters — 
not much, but still quite as much as most men under the 
ordinary chances of life, with a fair education, are likely to 
get together — and I assure you the knowledge does not 
make me happy at all. When I was a boy I used to like 
seeing the sunrise. I didn't know, then, there were any 
spots on the sun ; now I do, and am always frightened lest 
any more should come. When I was a boy I used to care 
about pretty stones. I got some Bristol diamonds at 
Bristol, and some dog-tooth spar in Derbyshire ; my whole 
collection had cost, perhaps, three half-crowns, and was 
worth considerably less ; and I knew nothing whatever, 
rightly, about any single stone in it; — could not even spell 
their names : but words cannot tell the joy they used 



222 FORS CLAVIGER \. 

to give me. Now, I have a collection of minerals worth, 
perhaps, from two to three thousand pounds ; and I know 
more about some of them than most other people. But I 
am not a whit happier, either for my knowledge, or posses- 
sions, for other geologists dispute my theories, to my 
grievous indignation and discontentment ; and I am miser- 
able about all my best specimens, because there are better 
in the British Museum. 

No, I assure you, knowledge by itself will not make you 
happy ; still less will it make you rich. Perhaps you 
thought I was writing carelessly when I told you, last 
month, " science did not pay." But you don't know what 
science is. You fancy it means mechanical art ; and so you 
have put a statue of Science on the Holborn Viaduct, with 
a steam-engine regulator in its hands. My ingenious friends, 
science has no more to do with making steam-engines than 
with making breeches ; though she condescends to help you 
a little in such necessary (or it may be, conceivably, in both 
cases, sometimes unnecessary) business. Science lives only 
in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor. Mr. 
John Kepler, for instance, who is found by Sir Henry 
YYotton " in the picturesque green country by the shores of 
the Donau, in a little black tent in a field, convertible, like 
a windmill, to all quarters, a camera-obscura, in fact. Mr. 
John invents rude toys, writes almanacs, practices medicine, 
for good reasons, his encouragement from the Holy Roman 
Empire and mankind being a pension of 18/. a year, and 
that hardly ever paid." 1 That is what one gets by star- 
gazing, my friends. And you cannot be simple enough, 
even in April, to think I got my three thousand-pounds' 
worth of minerals by studying mineralogy ? Not so ! They 
were earned for me by hard labor ; my father's in England, 
and many a sun-burnl vineyard-dresser's in Spain. 

1 Carlyle, Frederick, Vol. I. [5.321 (fust edition). 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 223 

"What business had you, in your idleness, with their 
earnings then?" you will perhaps ask. None, it may be ; I 
will tell you in a little while how you may find that out ; it 
is not to the point now. But it is to the point that you 
should observe I have not kept their earnings, the portion 
of them, at least, with which I bought minerals. That part 
of their earnings is all gone to feed the miners in Cornwall, 
or on the Hartz Mountains, and I have only got for myself a 
few pieces of glittering (not always that, but often unseemly) 
stone, which neither vinedressers nor miners cared for ; 
which you yourself would have to learn many hard words, 
much cramp mathematics, and useless chemistry, in order 
to care for ; which, if ever you did care for, as I do, would 
most likely only make you envious of the British Museum, 
and occasionally uncomfortable if any harm happened to 
your dear stones. I have a piece of red oxide of copper, 
for instance, which grieves me poignantly by losing its 
color ; and a crystal of sulphide of lead, with a chip in it, 
which causes me a great deal of concern — in April; be- 
cause I see it then by the fresh sunshine. 

My oxide of copper and sulphide of lead you will not 
then wisely envy me. Neither, probably, would you covet a 
handful of dark brown gravel, with a rough pebble in it, 
whitish, and about the size of a pea ; nor a few grains of 
apparently brass filings with which the gravel is mixed. I 
was but a Fool to give good money for such things, you 
think? It may well be. I gave thirty pounds for that 
handful of gravel, and the miners who found it were ill-paid 
then ; and it is not clear to me that this produce of their 
labor was the best possible. Shall we consider of it, with 
the help of the Cambridge Catechism? at the tenth page of 
which you will find that Mr. Mill's definition of productive 
labor is — "That which produces utilities fixed and em- 
bodied in material objects." 



224 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

This is very line — indeed, superfine — English; but I can, 
perhaps, make the meaning of the Greatest Thinker in 
England a little more lucid for you by vulgarizing his terms. 

"Object," you must always remember, is fine English for 
"Thing." It is a semi-Latin word, and properly means a 
thing "thrown in your way!' ; so that if you put "ion" to 
the end of it, it becomes Objection. We will rather say 
"Thing," if you have no objection — you and I. A "Mate- 
rial" thing, then, of course, signifies something solid and 
tangible. It is very necessary for Political Economists 
always to insert the word "material," lest people should 
suppose that there was any use or value in Thought or 
Knowledge, and other such immaterial objects. 

"Embodied" is a particularly elegant word; but super- 
lluous, because you know it would not be possible that a 
utility should be Disembodied, as long as it was in a mate- 
rial object. But when you wish to express yourself as 
thinking in a great manner, you may say — as, for instance, 
when you are supping vegetable soup — that your power of 
doing so conveniently and gracefully is "Embodied" in a 
spoon. 

"Fixed" is, I am afraid, rashly, as well as superfluously, 
introduced into his definition by Mr. Mill. It is conceiv- 
able that some Utilities may be also volatile, or planetary, 
even when embodied. But at last we come to the great 
word in the great definition — "Utility." 

And this word, I am sorry to say, puzzles me most of all ; 
for I never myself saw a Utility, either out of the body, or 
in it, and should be much embarrassed if ordered to produce 
one in either state. 

but it is fortunate for us that all this seraphic language, 
reduced to the vulgar tongue, will become, though fallen in 
dignity and reduced in dimension, perfectly intelligible. 
The Greatest Thinker in England means by these beautiful 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 22 5 

words to tell you that Productive labor is labor that pro- 
duces a Useful Thing. Which, indeed, perhaps, you knew 
— or, without the assistance of great thinkers, might have 
known, before now. But if Mr. Mill had said so much, 
simply, you might have been tempted to ask farther, — 
"What things are useful, and what are not?" And as Mr. 
Mill does not know, nor any other Political Economist 
going, — and as they therefore particularly wish nobody to 
ask them, — it is convenient to say, instead of "useful 
things," "utilities fixed and embodied in material objects," 
because that sounds so very like complete and satisfactory 
information, that one is ashamed, after getting it, to ask for 
any more. 

But it is not, therefore, less discouraging that for the 
present I have got no help towards discovering whether my 
handful of gravel with the white pebble in it was worth my 
thirty pounds or not. I am afraid it is not a useful thing to 
me. It lies at the back of a drawer, locked up all the year 
round. I never look at it now, for I know all about it : the 
only satisfaction I have for my money is knowing that 
nobody else can look at it ; and if nobody else wanted to, I 
shouldn't even have that. 

"What did you buy it for then?" you will ask. Well, if 
you must have the truth, because I was a Fool, and wanted 
it. Other people have bought such things before me. The 
white stone is a diamond, and the apparent brass filings are 
gold dust ; but, I admit, nobody ever yet wanted such things 
who was in their right senses. Only now, as I have can- 
didly answered all your questions, will you answer one of 
mine? If I hadn't bought it, what would you have had me 
do with my money? Keep that in the drawer instead? — or 
at my banker's, till it grew out of thirty pounds into sixty 
and a hundred, in fulfillment of the law respecting seed 
sown in good ground? 



226 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

Doubtless, that would have been more meritorious for 

the time. But when 1 had got the sixty or the hundred 
pounds — what should I have done with them? The ques- 
tion only becomes doubly and trebly serious ; and all the 
more, to me, because, when I told you last January that I 
had bought a picture for a thousand pounds, permitting 
myself in that folly for your advantage, as I thou- lit, 
hearing that many of you wanted art patronage, and wished 
to live by painting, — one of your own popular organs, 
the Liverpool Daily Courier, of February 9th, said, "it 
showed want of taste, — of tact," and was "something 
like a mockery," to tell you so ! I am not to buy pictures, 
therefore, it seems; — you like to be kept in mines and 
tunnels, and occasionally blown hither and thither, or 
crushed flat, rather than live by painting, in good light, 
and with the chance of remaining all day in a whole and 
unextended skin ? But what shall I buy, then, with the 
next thirty pieces of gold I can scrape together ? Precious 
things have been bought, indeed, and sold, before now for 
thirty pieces, even of silver, but with doubtful issue. The 
over-charitable person who was bought to be killed at that 
price, indeed, advised the giving of alms; but you won't 
have alms, I suppose — you are so independent, nor go into 
almshouses — (and, truly, I did not much wonder, as I 
walked by the old church of Abingdon, a Sunday or two 
since, where the almshouses are set round the churchyard, 
and under the level of it, and with a cheerful view of it, 
except that the tombstones slightly block the light of the 
lattice-windows ; with beautiful texts from Scripture over 
the doors, to remind the paupers still more emphatically 
that, highly blessed as they were, they were yet mortal) — 
you won't go into almshouses ; and all the clergy in Lon- 
don have been shrieking against alms-giving to the lower 
poor this whole winter long, till 1 am obliged, whenever I 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 22/ 

want to give anybody a penny, to look up and down the 
street first, to see if a clergyman 's coming. Of course, I 
know I might buy as many iron railings as I please, and be 
praised ; but I've no room for them. I can't well burn 
more coals than I do, because of the blacks, which spoil 
my books ; and the Americans won't let me buy any blacks 
alive, or else I would have some black dwarfs with parrots, 
such as one sees in the pictures of Paul Veronese. I 
should, of course, like, myself, above all things, to buy a 
pretty white girl, with a title — and I should get great 
praise for doing that — only I haven't money enough. 
White girls come dear, even when one buys them only like 
coals, for fuel. The Duke of Bedford, indeed, bought Joan 
of Arc, from the French, to burn, for only ten thousand 
pounds, and a pension of three hundred a year to the 
Bastard of Vendome — and I could and would have given 
that for her, and not burnt her ; but one hasn't such a 
chance every day. Will you, any of you, have the goodness 
— beggars, clergymen, workmen, seraphic doctors, Mr. Mill, 
Mr. Fawcett, or the Political-Economic Professor of my own 
University — I challenge you, I beseech you, all and singly, 
to tell me what I am to do with my money ? 

I mean, indeed, to give you my own poor opinion on the 
subject in May ; though I feel the more embarrassed in 
the thought of doing so, because, in this present April, I 
am so much a fool as not even to know clearly whether I 
have got any money or not. I know, indeed, that things 
go on at present as if I had ; but it seems to me that there 
must be a mistake somewhere, and that some day it will 
be found out. For instance, I have seven thousand pounds 
in what we call the Funds or Founded things ; but I 
am not comfortable about the Founding of them. All 
that I can see of them is a square bit of paper, with some 
ugly printing on it, and all that I know of them is that 



J2S FORS CLAVIGERA. 

this bit of paper gives me a right to tax you every year, 

and make you pay me two hundred pounds out of your 
wages; which is very pleasant for me; but how long will 
you be pleased to do so ? Suppose it should occur to you, 
any summer's clay, that you had better not? Where would 
my seven thousand pounds be ? In fact, where are they 
now ? We call ourselves a rich people ; but you see this 
seven thousand pounds of mine has no real existence — it 
only means that you, the workers, are poorer by two hun- 
dred pounds a year than you would be if I hadn't got it. 
And this is surely a very odd kind of money for a country 
to boast of. Well, then, besides this, I have a bit of low 
land at Greenwich, which, as far as I see anything of it, 
is not money at all, but only mud ; and would be of as 
little use to me as my handful of gravel in the drawer, if 
it were not that an ingenious person has found out that he 
can make chimney-pots of it ; and, every quarter, he brings 
me fifteen pounds off the price of his chimney-pots ; so 
that I am always sympathetically glad when there's a 
high wind, because then I know my ingenious friend's 
business is thriving. But suppose it should come into his 
head, in any less windy month than this April, that he had 
better bring me none of the price of his chimneys? And 
even though he should go on, as I hope he will, patiently, — 
(and I always give him a glass of wine when he brings 
me the fifteen pounds), — is this really to be called money 
of mine? And is the country any richer because, when 
anybody's chimney-pot is blown down in Greenwich, he 
must pay something extra, to me, before he can put it on 
again ? 

Then, also, I have some houses in Marylebone, which, 
though indeed very ugly and miserable, yet, so far as they 
ire actual beams and brick-bats put into shape, I mighl 
have imagined to be real property; only, you know, Mr. Mill 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 229 

says that people who build houses don't produce a com- 
modity, but only do us a service. So I suppose my houses 
are not "utilities embodied in material objects" (and, 
indeed, they don't look much like it) ; but I know I have 
the right to keep anybody from living in them unless they 
pay me ; only suppose some day the Irish faith, that people 
ought to be lodged for nothing, should become an English 
one also — -where would my money be ! Where is it now, 
except as a chronic abstraction from other people's earnings ? 
So again, I have some land in Yorkshire — some Bank 
" Stock " (I don't in the least know what that is) — and the 
like ; but whenever I examine into these possessions, I find 
they melt into one or another form of future taxation, and 
that I am always sitting — (if I were working I shouldn't 
mind, but I am only sitting) at the receipt of Custom, and 
a Publican as well as a Sinner. And then, to embarrass 
the business further yet, I am quite at variance with other 
people about the place where this money, whatever it is, 
comes from. The Spectator, for instance, in its article of 
25th June of last year, on Mr. Goschen's "lucid and forci- 
ble speech of Friday week," says that " the country is once 
more getting rich, and the money is filtering downwards to 
the actual workers." But whence, then, did it filter down 
to us, the actual idlers ? This is really a question very 
appropriate for April. For such golden rain raineth not 
every day, but in a showery and capricious manner, out of 
heaven, upon us ; mostly, as far as I can judge, rather 
pouring down than filtering upon idle persons, and running 
in thinner driblets, but I hope purer for the filtering process, 
to the "actual workers." But where does it come from? 
and in the times of drought between the showers, where 
does it go to? "The country is getting rich again," says 
the Spectator; but then, if the April clouds fail, may it get 
poor again ? And when it again becomes poor, — when, 



23O FORS CLAVIGERA. 

last 25th of June, it was poor, — what becomes, or had 
become, of the money? Was it verily lost, or only torpid 
in the winter of our discontent? or was it sown and buried 
in corruption, to be raised in a multifold power ? When we 
are in a panic about our money, what do we think is going 
to happen to it ? Can no economist teach us to keep it safe 
after we have once got it? nor any "beloved physician," — 
as I read the late Sir James Simpson is called in Edinburgh 
— -guard even our solid gold against death, or at least, fits 
of an apoplectic character, alarming to the family ? 

All these questions trouble me greatly ; but still to me 
the strangest point in the whole matter is, that though we 
idlers always speak as if we were enriched by Heaven, and 
became ministers of its bounty to you ; if ever you think the 
ministry slack, and take to definite pillage of us, no good 
ever comes of it to you ; but the sources of wealth seem 
to be stopped instantly, and you are reduced to the small 
gain of making gloves of our skins ; while, on the contrary, 
as long as we continue pillaging you, there seems no end to 
the profitableness of the business ; but always, however bare 
we strip you, presently, more, to be had. For instance — 
just read this little bit out of Froissart — about the English 
army in France before the battle of Crecy: — 

"We will now return to the expedition of the King of England. 
Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, as marshal, advanced before the King, 
with the vanguard of five hundred armed men and two thousand 
archers, and rode on for six or seven leagues' distance from the 
main army, burning and destroying the country. They found it 
rich and plentiful, abounding in all things ; the barns full of every 
sort of corn, and the houses with riches : the inhabitants at their 
ease, having cars, carts, horses, swine, sheep, and everything in 
abundance which the country afforded. They seized whatever 
they chose of all these good tilings, and brought them to the 
King's army ; but the soldiers did not give any account to their 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 23 I 

officers, or to those appointed by the King, of the gold and silver 
they took, which they kept to themselves. When they were come 
back, with all their booty safely packed in wagons, the Earl of 
Warwick, the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Thomas Holland, and the 
Lord Reginald Cobham, took their march, with their battalion on 
the right, burning and destroying the country in the same way 
that Sir Godfrey de Harcourt was doing. The King marched, 
with the main body, between these two battalions ; and every 
night they all encamped together. The King of England and 
Prince of Wales had, in their battalion, about three thousand 
men-at-arms, six thousand archers, ten thousand infantry, without 
counting those that were under the marshals ; and they marched 
on in the manner I have before mentioned, burning and destroy- 
ing the country, but without breaking their line of battle. They 
did not turn towards Coutances, but advanced to St. Lo, in 
Coutantin, which in those days was a very rich and commercial 
town, and worth three such towns as Coutances. In the town of 
St. Lo was much drapery, and many wealthy inhabitants ; among 
them you might count eight or nine score that were engaged in 
commerce. When the King of England was come near to the 
town, he encamped ; he would not lodge in it for fear of fire. He 
sent, therefore, his advanced guard forward, who soon conquered 
it, at a trifling loss, and completely plundered it. No one can 
imagine the quantity of riches they found in it, nor the number of 
bales of cloth. If there had been any purchasers, they might 
have bought enough at a very cheap rate. 

" The English then advanced towards Caen, which is a much 
larger town, stronger, and fuller of draperies and all other sorts of 
merchandise, rich citizens, noble dames and damsels, and fine 
churches. 

" On this day (Froissart does not say what day) the English 
rose very early, and made themselves ready to march to Caen ; 
the King heard mass before sunrise, and afterwards mounting his 
horse, with the Prince of Wales, and Sir Godfrey de Harcourt 
(who was marshal and director of the army), marched forward in 
order of battle. The battalion of the marshals led the van, and 
came near to the handsome town of Caem 



232 FORS CLAV1GERA. 

" When the townsmen, who had taken the field, perceived the 
English advancing, with banners and pennons flying in abundance, 
and saw those archers whom they had not been accustomed to, 
they were so frightened that they betook themselves to flight, and 
ran for the town in great disorder. 

"The English, who were after the runaways, made great havoc: 
for they spared none. 

"Those inhabitants who had taken refuge in the garrets flung 
down from them, in these narrow streets, stones, benches, and 
whatever they could lay hands on ; so that they killed and wounded 
upwards of five hundred of the English, which so enraged the 
King of England, when he received the reports in the evening, 
that he ordered the remainder of the inhabitants to be put to the 
sword, and the town burnt. But Sir Godfrey de Harcourt said to 
him : ' Dear sir, assuage somewhat of your anger, and be satisfied 
with what has already been done. You have a long journey yet 
to make before you arrive at Calais, whither it is your intention to 
go : and there are in this town a great number of inhabitants, who 
will defend themselves obstinately in their houses, if you force 
them to it : besides, it will cost you many lives before the town 
can be destroyed, which may put a stop to your expedition to 
Calais, and it will not redound to your honor : therefore, be sparing 
of your men, for in a month's time you will have call for them.' 
The King replied : ' Sir Godfrey, you are our marshal ; therefore 
order as you please ; for this time we wish not to interfere.' 

" Sir Godfrey then rode through the streets, his banner displayed 
before him, and ordered, in the King's name, that no one should 
dare, under pain of immediate death, to insult or hurt man or 
woman of the town, or attempt to set fire to any part of it. Several 
of the inhabitants, on hearing this proclamation, received the Eng- 
lish into their houses ; and others opened their coffers to them, 
giving up their all, since they were assured of their lives. How- 
ever, there were, in spite of these orders, many atrocious thefts 
and murders committed. The English continued masters of the 
town for three days ; in this time, they amassed great wealth, 
which they sent in barges down the river of Estrcham, to St. 
Saveur, two leagues off, where their licet was. The Earl of I Inn 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 233 

tingdon made preparations, therefore, with the two hundred men- 
at-arms and his four hundred archers, to carry over to England 
their riches and prisoners. The King purchased, from Sir Thomas 
Holland and his companions, the constable of France and the 
Earl of Tancarville, and paid down twenty thousand nobles for 
them. 

" When the King had finished his business in Caen, and sent his 
fleet to England, loaded with cloths, jewels, gold and silver plate, 
and a quantity of other riches, and upwards of sixty knights, with 
three hundred able citizens, prisoners ; he then left his quarters 
and continued his march as before, his two marshals on his right 
and left, burning and destroying all the flat country. He took the 
road to Evreux, but found he could not gain anything there, as it 
was well fortified. He went on towards another town called 
Louviers, which was in Normandy, and where there were many 
manufactories of cloth ; it was rich and commercial. The English 
won it easily, as it was not inclosed ; and having entered the town, 
it was plundered without opposition. They collected much wealth 
there ; and, after they had done what they pleased, they marched 
on into the county of Evreux, where they burnt everything except 
the fortified towns and castles, which the King left unattacked, as 
he was desirous of sparing his men and artillery. He therefore 
made for the banks of the Seine, in his approach to Rouen, where 
there were plenty of men-at-arms from Normandy, under the com- 
mand of the Earl of Harcourt, brother to Sir Godfrey, and the 
Earl of Dreux. 

" The English did not march direct towards Rouen, but went to 
Gisors, which has a strong castle, and burnt the town. After this, 
they destroyed Vernon, and all the country between Rouen and 
Pont-de-1'Arche : they then came to Mantes and Meulan, which 
they treated in the same manner, and ravaged all the country 
round about. 

" They passed by the strong castle of Roulleboise, and every- 
where found the bridges on the Seine broken down. They pushed 
forward until they came to Poissy, where the bridge was also 
destroyed ; but the beams and other parts of it were lying in the 



234 P0RS CLAVIGERA. 

"The King of England remained at the nunnery ol Poissy to 
the middle of August, and celebrated there the feast of the Virgin 
Mary." 

It all reads at first, you sec, just like a piece out of the 
newspapers of last month ; but there are material differences, 
notwithstanding. We fight inelegantly as well as expen- 
sively, with machines instead of bow and spear ; we kill 
about a thousand now to the score then, in settling any 
quarrel — (Agincourt was won with the loss of less than a 
hundred men ; only 25,000 English altogether were engaged 
at Crecy ; and 12,000, some say only 8,000, at Poictiers); 
we kill with far ghastlier wounds, crashing bones and flesh 
together ; we leave our wounded necessarily for clays and 
nights in heaps on the fields of battle ; we pillage districts 
twenty times as large, and with completer destruction of 
more valuable property ; and with a destruction as irrepar- 
able as it is complete ; for if the French or English burnt a 
church one day, they could build a prettier one the next ; 
but the modern Prussians couldn't even build so much as an 
imitation of one ; we rob on credit, by requisition, with in- 
genious mercantile "prolongations of claim ; and we improve 
contention of arms with contention of tongues, and are able 
to multiply the rancour of cowardice, and mischief of lying, 
in universal and permanent print ; and so we lose our tem- 
pers as well as our money, and become indecent in behavior 
as in raggedness ; for whereas, in old times, two nations 
separated by a little pebbly stream like the Tweed, or even 
the two halves of one nation, separated by thirty fathoms' 
depth of salt water (for most of the English knights and all 
the English kings were French by race, and the best of them 
by birth also), would go on pillaging and killing each other 
century after century, without the slightest ill-feeling towards, 
or disrespect for, one another, we can neither give anybod] 
a beating courteously, nor take one in good part, or without 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 235 

screaming and lying about it ; and finally, we add to these 
perfected Follies of Action more finely perfected Follies of 
Inaction ; and contrive hitherto unheard-of ways of being 
wretched through the very abundance of peace ; our work- 
men, here, vowing themselves to idleness, lest they should 
lower Wages, and there, being condemned by their parishes 
to idleness lest they should lower Prices ; while outside the 
workhouse all the parishioners are buying anything nasty, so 
that it be cheap ; and, in a word, under the seraphic teach- 
ing of Mr. Mill, we have determined, at last, that it is not 
Destruction, but Production, that is the cause of human dis- 
tress ; and the " Mutual and Cooperative Colonization Com- 
pany" declares, ungrammatically, but distinctly, in its 
circular sent to me on the 13th of last month, as a matter 
universally admitted, even among Cabinet Ministers — 
" that it is in the greater increasing power of production and 
distribution, as compared with demand, enabling the few to 
do the work of the many, that the active cause of the wide- 
spread poverty among the producing and lower-middle classes 
lay, which entails such enormous burdens on the Nation, and 
exhibits our boasted progress in the light of a monstrous 
N Sham." 

Nevertheless, however much we have magnified and mul- 
tiplied the follies of the past, the primal and essential prin- 
ciples of pillage have always been accepted ; and from the 
days when England lay so waste under that worthy and 
economical King who "called his tailor lown," that "whole 
families, after sustaining life as long as they could by eating 
roots, and the flesh of dogs and horses, at last died of hun- 
ger, and you might see many pleasant villages without a 
single inhabitant of either sex," while little Harry Switch-of- 
Broom sate learning to spell in Bristol Castle, (taught, I 
think, properly by his good uncle the preceptorial use of his 
name-plant, though they say the first Harry was the finer 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 

clerk,) and his mother, dressed all in white, escaped from 
Oxford over the snow in the moonlight, through B 
Wood here to Abingdon; and under the snows, by Wood- 
stock, the buds were growing for the bower of his Rose, — 
from that day to this, when the villages round Paris, and 
food-supply, are, by the blessing of God, as they then were 
round London — Kings have for the most part desired to 
win that pretty name of " Switch-of-Broom " rather by habit 
of growing in waste places ; or even emulating the Vision of 
Dion in " sweeping — diligently sweeping," than by attaining 
the other virtue of the Planta Genista, set forth by Virgil 
and Pliny, that it is pliant, and rich in honey ; the Lion- 
hearts of them seldom proving profitable to you, even so 
much as the stomach of Samson's Lion, or rendering it a 
soluble enigma in our Israel, that " out of the eater came 
forth meat"; nor has it been only your Kings who have 
thus made you pay for their guidance through the world, but 
your ecclesiastics have also made you pay for guidance out 
of it — particularly when it grew dark, and the signpost was 
illegible where the upper and lower roads divided ; — so that, 
as far as I can read and calculate, dying has been even more 
expensive to you than living ; and then, to finish the busi- 
ness, as your virtues have been made costly to you by the 
clergymen, so your vices have been made costly to you by 
the lawyers ; and you have one entire learned profession 
living on your sins, and the other on your repentance. So 
that it is no wonder that, things having gone on thus for a 
long time, you begin to think that you would rather live as 
sheep without any shepherd, and that having paid so dearly 
for your instruction in religion and law, you should now set 
your hope on a state of instruction in Trreligion and Liberty, 
which is, indeed, a form of education to be had for nothing, 
alike by the children of the Rich and Poor ; the saplings of 
the tree that was to be desired to make us wise, growing 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 237 

now in copsewood on the hills, or even by the roadsides, in 
a Republican Plantagenet manner, blossoming into cheapest 
gold, either for coins, which of course you Republicans will 
call, not Nobles, but Ignobles ; or crowns, second and third 
hand — (head, I should say) — supplied punctually on de- 
mand, with liberal reduction on quantity ; the roads them- 
selves beautifully public — tramwayed, perhaps — and with 
gates set open enough for all men to the free, outer, better 
world, your chosen guide preceding you merrily, with music 
and dancing. 

You have always danced too willingly, poor friends, to 
that player on the viol. We will try to hear, far away, a 
faint note or two from a more chief musician on stringed 
instruments, in May, when the time of the Singing of Birds 
is come. 

Faithfully yours, 

JOHN RUSKIN. 



LETTER V. 

" For lo, the winter is past, 
The rain is over and gone, 
The flowers appear on the earth, 
The time of the singing of birds i 
Arise, oh my fair one, my dove, 
And come." 



Denmark Hill, \st May, 1871. 



Mv Friends, 



It has been asked of me, very justly, why I have hitherto 
written to you of things you were little likely to care for, in 
words which it was difficult for you to understand. 

I have no fear but that you will one day understand all 
my poor words, — the saddest of them perhaps too well. 
But I have great fear that you may never come to under- 



238 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

stand these written above, which are part of a king's love- 
song, in one sweet Maw of many long since gone. 

I Eear that for you the wild winter's rain may never pass, 
— the flowers never appear on the earth ; — that for you no 
bird may ever sing; — for you no perfect Love arise, and 
fulfill your life in peace. 

"And why not for us, as for others? " will you answer me 
so, and take my fear for you as an insult ? 

Nay, it is no insult ; — nor am f happier than you. For 
me, the birds do not sing, nor ever will. But they would, 
for you, if you cared to have it so. . When I told you that 
you would never understand that love-song, I meant only 
that you would not desire to understand it. 

Are you again indignant with me ? Do you think, though 
you should labor, and grieve, and be trodden down in dis- 
honor all your clays, at least you can keep that one joy of 
Love, and that one honor of Home ? Had you, indeed, 
kept that, you had kept all. But no men yet, in the history 
of the race, have lost it so piteously. In many a country, 
and many an age, women have been compelled to labor for 
their husbands' wealth, or bread ; but never until now were 
they so homeless as to say, like the poor Samaritan, " I 
have no husband." Women of every country and people 
have sustained Avithout complaint the labor of fellowship : 
for the women of the latter days in England it has been 
reserved to claim the privilege of isolation. 

This, then, is the end of your universal education and 
civilization, and contempt of the ignorance of the Middle 
Ages, and of their chivalry. Not only do you declare your- 
selves too indolent to labor for daughters and wives, and too 
poor to support them ; but you have made the neglected and 
distracted creatures hold it for an honor to be independent 
of you, and shriek for some hold of the mattock for them- 
selves. Believe it or not, as you may, there has not been 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 239 

so low a level of thought reached by any race, since they 
grew to be male and female out of starfish, or chickweed, 
or whatever else they have been made from, by natural 
selection, — according to modern science. 

That modern science also, Economic and of other kinds, 
has reached its climax at last. For it seems to be the 
appointed function of the nineteenth century to exhibit in 
all things the elect pattern of perfect Folly, for a warning to 
the farthest future. Thus the statement of principle which 
I quoted to you in my last letter, from the circular of the 
Emigration Society, that it is over-production which is the 
cause of distress, is accurately the most Foolish thing, not 
only hitherto ever said by men, but which it is possible for 
men ever to say, respecting their own business. It is a kind 
of opposite pole (or negative acme of mortal stupidity) to 
Newton's discovery of gravitation as an acme of mortal 
wisdom : — as no wise being on earth will ever be able to 
make such another wise discovery, so no foolish being on 
earth will ever be capable of saying such another foolish 
thing, through all the ages. 

And the same crisis has been exactly reached by our 
natural science, and by our art. It has several times 
chanced to me, since I began these papers, to have the 
exact thing shown or brought to me that I wanted for 
illustration, just in time x — and it happened that on the 
very day on which I published my last letter, I had to go 
to the Kensington Museum ; and there I saw the most per- 
fectly and roundly ill-done thing which, as yet, in my whole 

1 Here is another curious instance : I have but a minute ago finished 
correcting these sheets, and take up the Times of this morning, April 
21st, and find in it the suggestion by the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
for the removal of exemption from taxation of Agricultural horses and 
carts, in the very nick of time to connect it, as a proposal for economic 
practice, with the statement of economic principle respecting Produc- 
tion, quoted on this page. 



24O FOKS CLAVIGERA. 

life, 1 ever saw produced by art. It had a tablet in front of 
it, bearing this inscription,— 

•• Statue in Mack and white marble, a Newfoundland Dog standing 
on a Serpent, which tests on a marble cushion, the pedestal ornamented 
with pietra dura fruits in relief. — English. Present Century. No. I." 

It was so very right fur me, the Ivensington people having 
been good enough to number it "L," the thing itself being 
almost incredible in its one-ness ; and, indeed, such a punc- 
tual accent over the iota of Miscreation, — so absolutely 
and exquisitely miscreant, that I am not myself capable of 
conceiving a Number two, or three, or any rivalship or asso- 
ciation with it whatsoever. The extremity of its unvirtue 
consisted, observe, mainly in the quantity of instruction 
which was abused in it. It showed that the persons who 
produced it had seen everything, and practiced everything ; 
and misunderstood everything they saw, and misapplied 
everything they did. They had seen Roman work, and 
Florentine work, and Byzantine work, and Gothic work ; 
and misunderstanding of everything had passed through 
them as the mud does through earthworms, and here at 
last was their worm-cast of a Production. 

But the second chance that came to me that day, was 
more significant still. From the Kensington Museum 1 
went to an afternoon tea, at a house where I was sure to 
meet some nice people. And among the first 1 met, was an 
old friend who had been hearing some lectures on botany 
at the Kensington Museum, and been delighted by them. 
She is the kind of person who gets good out of everything, 
and she was quite right in being delighted ; besides that, as 
1 found by her account of them, the lectures were really 
interesting, and pleasantly given. She had expected botany 
to be dull, and had not found it so, and " had learned so 
much." On hearing this, I proceeded naturally to inquire 
what ; lor my idea of her was that before she went to the 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 24I 

lectures at all, she had known more botany than she was 
likely to learn by them. So she told me that she had 
learned first of all that there " were seven sorts of leaves." 
Now I have always a great suspicion of the number Seven ; 
because when I wrote the Seven Lamps of Architecture, it 
required all the ingenuity I was master of to prevent them 
from becoming Eight, or even Nine, on my hands. So I 
thought to myself that it would be very charming if there 
were only seven sorts of leaves ; but that, perhaps, if one 
looked the woods and forests of the world carefully through, 
it was just possible that one might discover as many as eight 
sorts ; and then where would my friend's new knowledge of 
Botany be ? Sol said, " That was very pretty ; but what 
more?" Then my friend told me that she had no idea, 
before, that petals were leaves. On which, I thought to 
myself that it would not have been any great harm to her 
if she had remained under her old impression that petals 
were petals. But I said, "That was very pretty, too; and 
what more?" So then my friend told me that the lecturer 
said, "the object of his lectures would be entirely accom- 
plished if he could convince his hearers that there was no 
such thing as a flower." Now, in that sentence you have 
the most perfect and admirable summary given you of the 
general temper and purposes of modern science. It gives 
lectures on Botany, of which the object is to show that 
there is no such thing as a Flower ; on Humanity, to show 
that there is no such thing as a Man ; and on Theology, to 
show there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as a 
Man, but only a Mechanism ; no such thing as a God, but 
only a series of Forces. The two faiths are essentially one : 
if you feel yourself to be only a machine, constructed to be 
a Regulator of minor machinery, you will put your statue 
of such science on your Holborn Viaduct, and necessarily 
recognize only major machinery as regulating you. 



242 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

I must explain the real meaning to you, however, of that 
saying of the Botanical lecturer, for it has a wide bearing. 
Some fifty years ago, the poet Goethe discovered that all the 
parts of plants had a kind of common nature, and would 
change into each other. Now this was a true discovery, 
and a notable one ; and you will find that, in fact, all plants 
are composed of essentially two parts — the leaf and root — 
one loving the light, the other darkness ; one liking to be 
clean, the other to be dirty ; one liking to grow for the most 
part up, the other for the most part down ; and each having 
faculties and purposes of its own. But the pure one, which 
loves the light, has, above all things, the purpose of being 
married to another leaf, and having child-leaves, and 
children's children of leaves, to make the earth fair 
forever. And when the leaves marry, they put on wed- 
ding-robes, and are more glorious than Solomon in all his 
glory, and they have feasts of honey and we call them 
" Flowers." 

In a certain sense, therefore, you see the Botanical lec- 
turer was quite right. There are no such things as Flowers 
— there are only Leaves. Nay, farther than this, there may 
be a dignity in the less happy, but un withering leaf, which 
is, in some sort, better than the brief lily of its bloom ; — 
which the great poets always knew, — well ; — Chaucer, 
before Goethe ; and the writer of the First Psalm, before 
Chaucer. The Botanical lecturer was in a deeper sense 
than he knew, right. 

But in the deepest sense of all, the Botanical lecturer was, 
to the extremity of wrongness, wrong ; for leaf, and root, 
and fruit exist, all of them, only — that there maybe flowers. 
He disregarded the life and passion of the creature, which 
were its essence. Had he looked for these, he would have 
recognized that in the thought of Nature herself, there is, in 
a plant, nothing else but its flowers. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 243 

Now in exactly the sense that modern Science declares 
there is no such thing as a Flower, it has declared there is 
no such thing as a Man, but only a transitional form of 
Ascidians and apes. It may, or may not be true — it is not 
of the smallest consequence whether it be or not. The real 
fact is, that, seen with human eyes, there is nothing else but 
man ; that all animals and beings beside him are only made 
that they may change into him ; that the world truly exists 
only in the presence of Man, acts only in the passion of 
Man. The essence of Light is in his eyes, — the center of 
Force in his soul, — the pertinence of Action in his deeds. 

And all true science — which my Savoyard guide rightly 
scorned me when he thought I had not, — all true science is 
"savoir vivre." 1 But all your modern science is the contrary 
of that. It is "savoir mourir."- 

And of its very discoveries, such as they are, it cannot 
make use. 

That telegraphic signaling was a discovery ; and con- 
ceivably, some day, may be a useful one. And there was 
some excuse for your being a little proud when, about last 
sixth of April (Coeur de Lion's death-day, and Albert 
Durer's), you knotted a copper wire all the way to Bombay, 
and flashed a message along it, and back. 

But what was the message, and what the answer ? Is 
India the better for what you said to her? Are you the 
better for what she replied ? 

If not, you have only wasted an all-round-the-world's 
length of copper wire, — which is, indeed, about the sum of 
your doing. If you had had, perchance, two words of 
common sense to say, though you had taken wearisome 
time and trouble to send them ; — though you had written 
them slowly in gold, and sealed them with a hundred seals, 
and sent a squadron of ships of the line to carry the scroll, 

1 Knowing how to live. 2 Knowing how to die. 



244 F RS CLAVIGERA. 

and the squadron had fought its way round the Cape of 
Good Hope, through a year of storms, with loss of all its 
ships but one, — the two words of common sense would 
have been worth the carriage, and more. But you have not 
anything like so much as that, to say, either to India, or to 
any other place. 

You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown 
landscapes for you. That was also a discovery, and some 
day may be useful. But the sun had drawn landscapes 
before for you, not in brown, but in green, and blue, and 
all imaginable colors, here in England. Not one of you 
ever looked at them then ; not one of you cares for the 
loss of them now, when you have shut the sun out with 
smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown 
blots through a hole in a box. There was a rocky valley 
between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine 
as the Vale of Tempe ; you might have seen the Gods 
there morning and evening — Apollo and all the sweet 
Muses of the Light — walking in fair procession on the 
lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles of its 
crags. You cared neither for Gods nor grass, but for cash 
(which you did not know the way to get) ; you thought you 
could get it by what the Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." 
You Enterprised a Railroad through the valley — you blasted 
its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its 
lovely stream. The valley is gone, and the Gods with 
it ; and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in 
half an hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton ; which 
you think a lucrative process of exchange — you Fools 
Everywhere. 

To talk at a distance, when you have nothing to say, 
though you were ever so near ; to go fast from this place 
to that, with nothing to do either at one or the other : these 
are powers certainly. Much more, power of increased Pro- 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 245 

duction, if you, indeed, had got it, would be something to 
boast of. But are you so entirely sure that you have got 
it — that the mortal disease of plenty, and afflictive affluence 
of good things, are all you have to dread ? 

Observe. A man and a woman, with their children, 
properly trained, are able easily to cultivate as much ground 
as will feed them ; to build as much wall and roof as will 
lodge them, and to spin and weave as much cloth as will 
clothe them. They can all be perfectly happy and healthy 
in doing this. Supposing that they invent machinery which 
will build, plough, thresh, cook, and weave, and that they 
have none of these things any more to do, but may read, or 
play croquet, or cricket, all day long, I believe myself that 
they will neither be so good nor so happy as without the 
machines. But I waive my belief in this matter for the 
time. I will assume that they become more refined and 
moral persons, and that idleness is in future to be the 
mother of all good. But observe, I repeat, the power of 
your machine is only in enabling them to be idle. It will 
not enable them to live better than they did before, nor to 
live in greater numbers. Get your heads quite clear on 
this matter. Out of so much ground, only so much living 
is to be got, with or without machinery. You may set a 
million of steam-ploughs to work on an acre, if you like — 
out of that acre only a given number of grains of corn will 
grow, scratch or scorch it as you will. So that the question 
is not at all whether, by having more machines, more of you 
can live. No machines will increase the possibilities of life. 
They only increase the possibilities of idleness. Suppose, 
for instance, you could get the oxen in your plow driven by 
a goblin, who would ask for no pay, not even a cream bowl, 
— (you have nearly managed to get it driven by an iron 
goblin, as it is) — well, your furrow will take no more seeds 
than if you had held the stilts yourself. But, instead of 



246 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

holding them, you sit, I presume, on a bank beside the field, 
under an eglantine; — watch the goblin at his work, and 
read poetry. Meantime, your wife in the house has also 
got a goblin to weave and wash for her. And she is lying 
on the sofa, reading poetry. 

Now, as I said, I don't believe you would be happier so, 
but I am willing to believe it ; only, since you are already 
such brave mechanists, show me at least one or two places 
where you are happier. Let me see one small example of 
approach to this seraphic condition. I can show you 
examples, millions of them, of happy people, made happy 
by their own industry. Farm after farm I can show you 
in Bavaria, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and such other places, 
where men and women are perfectly happy and good, with- 
out any iron servants. Show me, therefore, some English 
'family, with its fiery familiar, happier than these. Or bring 
me — for I am not inconvincible by any kind of evidence, 
— bring me the testimony of an English family or two to 
their increased felicity. Or if you cannot do so much as 
that, can you convince even themselves of it ? They are 
perhaps happy, if only they knew how happy they were ; 
Virgil thought so, long ago, of simple rustics ; but you hear 
at present your steam-propelled rustics are crying out that 
they are anything else than happy, and that they regard 
their boasted progress " in the light of a monstrous Sham." 
I must tell you one little thing, however, which greatly 
perplexes my imagination of the relieved ploughman sitting 
under his rose bower, reading poetry. I have told it you 
before, indeed, but I forget where. There was really a 
great festivity, and expression of satisfaction in the new 
order of things, down in Cumberland, a little while ago ; 
some first of May, I think it was, a country festival, such as 
the old heathens, who had no iron servants, used to keep 
with piping and dancing. So I thought, from the liberated 



FORS CLAVIGERA. " 247 

country people — their work all done for them by goblins 
— we should have some extraordinary piping and dancing. 
But there was no dancing at all, and they could not even 
provide their own piping. They had their goblin to Pipe 
for them. They walked in procession after their steam 
plough, and their steam plough whistled to them occa- 
sionally in the most melodious manner it could. Which 
seemed to me, indeed, a return to more than Arcadian 
simplicity ; for in old Arcadia, plough boys truly whistled 
as they went, for want of thought ; whereas, here was verily 
a large company walking without thought, but not having 
any more even the capacity of doing their own Whistling. 

But next, as to the inside of the house. Before you got 
your power-looms, a woman could always make herself a 
chemise and petticoat of bright and pretty appearance. I 
have seen a Bavarian peasant-woman at church in Munich, 
looking a much grander creature, and more beautifully 
dressed, than any of the cross and embroidered angels in 
Hesse's high-art frescoes (which happened to be just above 
her, so that I could look from one to the other). Well, here 
you are in England, served by household demons, with five 
hundred fingers, at least, weaving for one that used to 
weave in the days of Minerva. You ought to be able to 
show me five hundred dresses for one that used to be ; 
tidiness ought to have become five-hundred-fold tidier ; 
tapestry should be increased into cinque-cento-fold irides- 
cence of tapestry. Not only your peasant-girl ought to be 
lying on the sofa reading poetry, but she ought to have in 
her wardrobe five hundred petticoats instead of one. Is 
that, indeed, your issue ? or are you only on a curiously 
crooked way to it ? 

It is just possible, indeed, that you may not have been 
allowed to get the use of the goblin's work — that other 
people may have got the use of it, and you none ; because, 



24S • FORS CLAVIGERA. 

perhaps, you have not been able to evoke goblins wholly for 
your own personal service ; but have been borrowing goblins 
from the capitalist, and paying interest, in the " position of 
William," on ghostly self-going planes ; but suppose you 
had laid by capital enough, yourselves, to hire all the 
demons in the world, — nay, — all that are inside of it ; are 
you quite sure you know what you might best set them to 
work at ? and what " useful things" you should command 
them to make for you ? I told you, last month, that no 
economist going (whether by steam or ghost), knew what 
are useful things and what are not. Very few of you know, 
yourselves, except by bitter experience of the want of them. 
And no demons, either of iron or spirit, can ever make 
them. 

There are three Material things, not only useful, but 
essential to Life. No one " knows how to live " till he has 
got them. 

These are, Pure Air, Water, and Earth. 

There are three Immaterial things, not only useful, but 
essential to Life. No one knows how to live till he has got 
them also. 

These are, Admiration, Hope, and Love. 1 

Admiration — the power of discerning and taking delight 
in what is beautiful in visible Form, and lovely in human 
Character ; and, necessarily, striving to produce what is 
beautiful in form, and to become what is lovely in character. 

Hope — the recognition, by true Foresight, of better 
things to be reached hereafter, whether by ourselves or 
others ; necessarily issuing in the straightforward and 
undisappointable effort to advance, according to our proper 
power, the gaining of them. 

Love, both of family and neighbor, faithful, and satisfied. 

These are the six chiefly useful things to be got by 

1 Wordsworth, Excursion, Book IV. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 249 

Political Economy, when it has become a science. I will 
briefly tell you what modern Political Economy — the great 
"savoir mourir" — is doing with them. 

The first three, I said, are Pure Air, Water, and Earth. 

Heaven gives you the main elements of these. You can 
destroy them at your pleasure, or increase, almost without 
limit, the available quantities of them. 

You can vitiate the air by your manner of life, and of 
death, to any extent. You might easily vitiate it so as to 
bring such a pestilence on the globe as would end all of 
you. You or your fellows, German and French, are at 
present busy in vitiating it to the best of your power in 
every direction ; — chiefly at this moment with corpses, and 
animal and vegetable ruin in war : changing men, horses, 
and garden-stuff into noxious gas. But everywhere, and 
all day long, you are vitiating it with foul chemical exhala- 
tions ; and the horrible nests, which you call towns, are 
little more than laboratories for the distillation into heaven 
of venomous smokes and smells, mixed with effluvia from 
decaying animal matter, and infectious miasmata from 
purulent disease. 

On the other hand, your power of purifying the air, by 
dealing properly and swiftly with all substances in corrup- 
tion ; by absolutely forbidding noxious manufactures ; and 
by planting in all soils the trees which cleanse and invigorate 
earth and atmosphere, — ■ is literally infinite. You might 
make every breath of air you draw, food. 

Secondly, your power over the rain and river-waters of 
the earth is infinite. You can bring rain where you will, 
by planting wisely and tending carefully ; — drought, where 
you will, by ravage of woods and neglect of the soil. You 
might have the rivers of England as pure as the crystal of 
the rock ; — beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools ; — so 
full of fish that you might take them out with your hands 



250 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

instead of nets. Or you may do always as you have done 
now, turn every river of England into a common sewer, so 
that you cannot so much as baptise an English baby but 
with filth, unless you hold its face out in the rain ; and even 
that falls dirty. 

Then for the third, Earth, — meant to be nourishing for 
you, and blossoming. You have learned about it, that there 
is no such thing as a flower ; and as far as your scientific 
hands and scientific brains, inventive of explosive and 
deathful, instead of blossoming and life-giving, Dust, can 
contrive, you have turned the Mother-Earth, Demeter, 1 into 

1 Read this, for instance, concerning the Gardens of Paris : — one 
sentence in the letter is omitted ; I will give it in full elsewhere, with 
its necessary comments : — 

" To the Editor of the Titties. 

"5th April, 1 87 1. 

" Sir, — As the paragraph you quoted on Monday from the Fiela 
gives no idea of the destruction in the gardens round Paris, if you can 
spare me a very little space I will endeavor to supplement it. 

" The public gardens in the interior of Paris, including the planting 
on the greater number of the Boulevards, are in a condition perfectly 
surprising when one considers the sufferings even well-to-do persons 
had to endure for want of fuel during the siege. Some of them, like 
the little oases in the center of the Louvre, even look as pretty as ever. 
After a similar ordeal, it is probable we should not have a stick left in 
London, and the presence of the very handsome planes on the Boule- 
vards, and large trees in the various squares and gardens, after the 
winter of 1870-71, is most creditable to the population. But when one 
goes beyond the Champs Elysees and toward the Bois, down the once 
beautiful Avenue de l'lmperatrice, a sad scene of desolation presents 
itself. A year ago, it was the finest avenue garden in existence ; now a 
considerable part of the surface where troops were camped is about as 
filthy and as cheerless as Leicester Square or a sparsely furnished rub- 
bish yard. 

" The view into the once richly-wooded Bois from the huge and ugly 
banks of earth which now cross the noble roads leading into it is deso- 
late indeed, the stumps of the trees cut down over a large extent of its 
surface reminding one of the dreary scenes observable in many parts of 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 2 5 I 

the Avenger- Earth, Tisiphone — with the voice of your 
brother's blood crying out of it, in one wild harmony round 
all its murderous sphere. 

Canada and the United States, where the stumps of the burnt or cut- 
down pines are allowed to rot away for years. The zone of ruins 
round the vast belt of fortifications I need not speak of, nor of the 
other zone of destruction round each of the forts, as here houses and 
gardens and all have disappeared. But the destruction in the wide zone 
occupied by French and Prussian outposts is beyond description. I 
got to Paris the morning after the shooting of Generals Clement, 
Thomas, and Lecomte, and in consequence did not see so much of it as 
I otherwise might have done ; but round the villages of Sceaux, Bourg- 
la-Reine, L'Hay, Vitry, and Villejuif, I saw an amount of havoc which 
the subscriptions to the French Horticultural Relief Fund will go but a 
very small way to repair. Notwithstanding all his revolutions and wars, 
the Frenchman usually found time to cultivate a few fruit-trees, and the 
neighborhood of the villages above mentioned were only a few of many 
covered by nurseries of young trees. When I last visited Vitry, in the 
autumn of 1868, the fields and hill-sides around were everywhere 
covered with trees ; now the view across them is only interrupted by 
stumps about a foot high. When at Vitry on the 28th of March, I 
found the once fine nursery of M. Honore Desfresne deserted, and many 
acres once covered with large stock and specimens cleared to the ground. 
And so it was in numerous other cases. It may give some notion of 
the effect of the war on the gardens and nurseries around Paris, when 
I state that, according to returns made up just before my visit to Vitry 
and Villejuif, it was found that round these two villages alone 2,400,400 
fruit and other trees were destroyed. As to the private gardens, I can- 
not give a better idea of them than by describing the materials com- 
posing the protecting bank of a battery near Sceaux. It was made up 
of mattresses, sofas, and almost every other large article of furniture, 
with the earth stowed between. There were, in addition, nearly forty 
orange and oleander tubs gathered from the little gardens in the neigh- 
borhood visible in various parts of the ugly bank. One nurseryman at 
Sceaux, M. Keteleer, lost 1,500 vols, of books, which were not taken 
to Germany, but simply mutilated and thrown out of the doors to 
rot. . . . Multiply these few instances by the number of districts 
occupied by the belligerents during the war, and some idea of the 
effects of glory on gardening in France may be obtained. 

" W. RoisiNSON." 



2 52 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

That is what you have done for the Three Material 
Useful Things. 

Then for the Three Immaterial Useful Things. For 
Admiration, you have learnt contempt and conceit. There 
is no lovely thing ever yet done by man that you care for, 
or can understand ; but you are persuaded you are able to 
do much finer things yourselves. You gather, and exhibit 
together, as if equally instructive, what is infinitely bad, 
with what is infinitely good. You do not know which is 
which ; you instinctively prefer the Bad, and do more of it. 
You instinctively hate the Good, and destroy it. 1 

Then, secondly, for Hope. You have not so much spirit 
of it in you as to begin any plan which will not pay for ten 
years ; nor so much intelligence of it in you (either poli- 
ticians or workmen), as to be able to form one clear idea 
of what you would like your country to become. 

Then, thirdly, for Love. You were ordered by the 
Founder of your religion to love your neighbor as 
yourselves. 

You have founded an entire Science of Political Economy, 
on what you have stated to be the constant instinct of man 
— the desire to defraud his neighbor. 

And you have driven your women mad, so that they ask 
no more for Love, nor for fellowship with you ; but stand 
against you, and ask for "justice." 

1 Last night (I am writing this on the iSth of April) I got a letter 
from Venice, bringing me the, I believe, too well-grounded, report that 
the Venetians have requested permission from the government of Italy 
to pull down their Ducal Palace, and " rebuild " it. Put up a horrible 
model of it, in its place, that is to say, for which their architects may 
charge a commission. Meantime, all their canals are choked with 
human dung, which they are too poor to cart away, but throw out at 
their windows. 

And all the great thirteenth-century cathedrals in France have been 
destroyed, within my own memory, only that architects might charge 
commissions for putting up false models of them in their place. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 253 

Are there any of you who are tired of all this ? Any of 
you, Landlords or Tenants? Employers or Workmen? 

Are there any landlords, — any masters, — who would like 
better to be served by men than by iron devils ? 

Any tenants, any workmen, who can be true to their 
leaders and to each other ? who can vow to work and to 
live faithfully, for the sake of the joy of their homes ? 

Will any such give the tenth of what they have, and of 
what they earn, — not to emigrate with, but to stay in Eng- 
land with ; and do what is in their hands and hearts to 
make her a happy England? 

I am not rich (as people now estimate riches) ; and great 
part of what I have is- already engaged in maintaining art- 
workmen, or for other objects more or less of public utility. 
The tenth of whatever is left to me, estimated as accurately 
as I can (you shall see the accounts), I will make over to 
you in perpetuity, with the best security that English law 
can give, on Christmas Day of this year, with engagement 
to add the tithe of whatever I earn afterwards. Who else 
will help, with little or much? the object of such fund being, 
to begin, and gradually — no matter how slowly — to in- 
crease, the buying and securing of land in England, which 
shall not be built upon, but cultivated by Englishmen, with 
their own hands, and such help of force as they can find in 
wind and wave. 

I do not care with how many, or how few, this thing is 
begun, nor on what inconsiderable scale, — if it be but in 
two or three poor men's gardens. So much, at least, I can 
buy, myself, and give them. If no help come, I have done 
and said what I could, and there will be an end. If any 
help come to me, it is to be on the following conditions : — 
We will try to make some small piece of English ground, 
beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have no steam- 
engines upon it, and no railroads ; we will have no un- 



254 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

tended or unthought-of creatures on it ; none wretched, but 
the sick ; none idle, but the dead. We will have no liberty 
upon it ; but instant obedience to known law, and ap- 
pointed persons : no equality upon it ; but recognition of 
every betterness that we can find, and reprobation of every 
worseness. When we want to go anywhere, we will go 
there quietly and safely, not at forty miles an hour in the 
risk of our lives ; when we want to carry anything anywhere, 
we will carry it either on the backs of beasts, or on our 
own, or in carts, or boats ; we will have plenty of flowers 
and vegetables in our gardens, plenty of corn and grass in 
our fields, — and few bricks. We will have some music and 
poetry ; the children shall learn to dance to it and sing to 
it ; perhaps some of the old people, in time, may also. We 
will have some art, moreover ; we will at least try if, like 
the Greeks, we can't make some pots. The Greeks used to 
paint pictures of gods on their pots ; we, probably, cannot 
do as much, but we may put some pictures of insects on 
them, and reptiles ; — butterflies, and frogs, if nothing 
better. There was an excellent old potter in France who 
used to put frogs and vipers into his dishes, to the admi- 
ration of mankind ; we can surely put something nicer than 
that. Little by little, some higher art and imagination may 
manifest themselves among us ; and feeble rays of science 
may dawn upon us. Botany, though too dull to dispute the 
existence of flowers ; and history, though too simple to 
question the nativity of men ; — nay — even perhaps an 
uncalculating and uncovetous wisdom, as of rude Magi, 
presenting, at such nativity, gifts of gold and frankincense. 

Faithfully yours, 

JOHN RUSKIN. 



My Friends, 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 255 

LETTER VI. 

Denmark Hill, \st June, 1S71. 1 



The main purpose of these letters having been stated in 
the last of them, it is needful that I should tell you why I 
approach the discussion of it in this so desultory way, writ- 
ing (as it is too true that I must continue to write,) " of 
things that you little care for, in words that you cannot 
easily understand." 

I write of things you little care for, knowing that what 
you least care for is, at this juncture, of the greatest moment 
to you. 

And I write in words you are little likely to understand, 
because I have no wish (rather the contrary) to tell you 
anything that you can understand without taking trouble. 
You usually read so fast that you can catch nothing but 
the echo of your own opinions, which, of course, you are 
pleased to see in print. I neither wish to please nor dis- 
please you ; but to provoke you to think ; to lead you to 
think accurately ; and help you to form, perhaps, some 
different opinions from those you have now. 

Therefore, I choose that you shall pay me the price of 
two pots of beer, twelve times in the year, for my advice, 
each of you who wants it. If you like to think of me as a 

1 I think it best to publish this letter as it was prepared for press on 
the morning of the 25th of last month, at Abingdon, before the papers 
of that day had reached me. You may misinterpret its tone ; and think 
it is written without feeling ; but I will endeavor to give you in my next 
letter, a brief statement of the meaning, to the French and to all other 
nations, of this war, and its results : in the meantime, trust me, there is 
probably no other man living to whom, in the abstract, and irrespective 
of loss of family and property, the ruin of Paris is so great a sorrow as 
it is to me. 



256 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

quack doctor, you are welcome ; and you may consider the 
large margins, and thick paper, and ugly pictures of my 
books, as my caravan, drum, and skeleton. You would 
probably, if invited in that manner, buy my pills ; and I 
should make a great deal of money out of you ; but being 
an honest doctor, I still mean you to pay me what you 
ought. You fancy, doubtless, that I write — as most other 
political writers do — my "opinions" ; and that one man's 
opinion is as good as another's. You are much mistaken. 
When I only opine things, I hold my tongue ; and work till 
I more than opine — -until I know them. If the things 
prove unknowable, I with final perseverance, hold my tongue 
about them, and recommend a like practice to other people. 
If the things prove knowable, as soon as I know them, I am 
ready to write about them, if need be ; not till then. That 
is what people call my "arrogance." They write and talk 
themselves, habitually, of what they know nothing about ; 
they cannot in any wise conceive the state of mind of a 
person who will not speak till he knows ; and then tells 
them, serenely, "This is so ; you may find it out for your- 
selves, if you choose ; but, however little you may choose it, 
the thing is still so." 

Now it has cost me twenty years of thought, and of hard 
reading, to learn what I have to tell you in these pamphlets ; 
and you will find, if you choose to find, it is true ; and may 
prove, if you choose to prove, that it is useful: and I am 
not in the least minded to compete for your audience with 
the "opinions" in your damp journals, morning and even- 
ing, the black of them coming off on your fingers, and 
beyond all washing, into your brains. It is no affair of 
mine whether you attend to me or not ; but yours wholly ; 
my hand is weary of pen-holding, my heart is sick of think- 
ing ; for my own part, I would not write you these pamphlets 
though you would give me a barrel of beer, instead of two 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 257 

pints, for them ; — I write them wholly for your sake ; I 
choose that you shall have them decently printed on cream- 
colored paper, and with a margin underneath, which you can 
write on, if you like. That is also for your sake ; it is a 
proper form of book for any man to have who can keep his 
books clean ; and if he cannot, he has no business with 
books at all ; it costs me ten pounds to print a thousand 
copies, and five more to give you a picture ; and a penny off 
my sevenpence to send you the book — a thousand sixpences 
are twenty-five pounds ; when you have bought a thousand 
Fors of me, I shall therefore have five pounds for my trouble 

— and my single shopman, Mr. Allen, five pounds for his ; 
we won't work for less, either of us ; not that we would not, 
were it good for you ; but it would be by no means good. 
And I mean to sell all my large books, henceforward, in the 
same way ; well printed, well bound, and at a fixed price ; 
and the trade may charge a proper and acknowledged profit 
for the trouble in retailing the book. Then the public know 
what they are about, , and so will tradesmen ; I, the first pro- 
ducer, answer, to the best of my power, for the quality of 
the book ; — paper, binding, eloquence, and all : the retail- 
dealer charges what he ought to charge, openly ; and if the 
public do not choose to give it, they can't get the book. 
That is what I call legitimate business. Then as for this 
misunderstanding of me — remember that it is really not 
easy to understand anything, which you have not heard 
before, if it relates to a complex subject ; also it is quite 
easy to misunderstand things that you are hearing every day 

— which seem to you of the intelligiblest sort. But I can 
only write of things in my own way and as they come into 
my head ; and of the things I care for, whether you care for 
them or not, as yet. I will answer for it, you must care for 
some of them, in time. 

To take an instance close to my hand : you would of 



258 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

course think it little conducive to your interests that I should 
give you any account of the wild hyacinths which are open- 
ing in flakes of blue fire, this day, within a couple of miles 
of me, in the glades of Bagley wood through which the 
Empress Maude fled in the snow (and which, by the way, I 
slink through, myself, in some discomfort, lest the game- 
keeper of the college of the gracious Apostle St. John should 
catch sight of me ; not that he would ultimately decline to 
make a distinction between a poacher and a professor, but 
that I dislike the trouble of giving an account of myself). 
Or, if even you would bear with a scientific sentence or two 
about them, explaining to you that they were only green 
leaves turned blue, and that it was of no consequence 
whether they were either; and that, as flowers, they were 
scientifically to be considered as not in existence, — you will, 
I fear, throw my letter, even though it has cost you seven- 
pence, aside at once, when I remark to you that these wood- 
hyacinths of Bagley have something to do with the battle of 
Marathon, and if you knew it, are of more vital interest to 
you than even the Match Tax. 

Nevertheless, as I shall feel it my duty, some day, to 
speak to you of Theseus and his vegetable soup, so to-day, 
I think it necessary to tell you that the wood-hyacinth is 
the best English representative of the tribe of flowers which 
the Greeks called "Asphodel," and which they thought 
the heroes who had fallen in the battle of Marathon, or in 
any other battle, fought in just quarrel, were to be rewarded, 
and enough rewarded, by living in fields full of ; fields 
called, by them, Elysian, or the Fields of Coming, as you 
and I talk of the good time "Coming," though with perhaps 
different views as to the nature of the to be expected goodness. 

Now what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other 
day to the Civil Engineers (see Saturday Review, April 
29th) is entirely true ; namely, that in any of our colliery 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 259 

or cartridge-manufactory explosions, we send as many men 
(or women) into Elysium as were likely to get there after the 
battle of Marathon ; 1 and that is, indeed, like the rest of 
our economic arrangements, very fine, and pleasant to think 
upon ; neither may it be doubted on modern principles of 
religion and equality, that every collier and cartridge-filler is 
as fit for Elysium as any heathen could be ; and that in all 
these respects the battle of Marathon is no more deserving 
of English notice. But what I want you to reflect upon, as 
of moment to you, is whether you really care for the hya- 
cinthine Elysium you are going to ? and if you do, why you 
should not live a little while in Elysium here, instead of 
waiting so patiently, and working so hardly, to be blown or 
flattened into it? The hyacinths will grow well enough on 
the top of the ground, if you will leave off digging away at 
the bottom of it ; and another plant of the asphodel species, 
which the Greeks thought of more importance even than 
hyacinths — onions ; though, indeed, one dead hero is repre- 
sented by Lucian as finding something to complain of even 
in Elysium, because he got nothing but onions there to eat. 
But it is simply, I assure you, because the French did not 
understand that hyacinths and onions were the principal 
things to fill their existing Elysian Fields, or Champs Ely- 
sees, with, but chose to have carriages, and roundabouts 
instead, that a tax on matches in those fields would be, 
now-a-days, so much more productive than one on Aspho- 
del ; and I see that only a day or two since even a poor 
Punch's show could not play out its play in Elysian peace, 
but had its corner knocked off by a shell from Mont 
Vale'rien, and the dog Toby "seriously alarmed." 

1 Of course this was written, and in type, before the late catastrophe 
in Paris, and the one at Dunkirk is, I suppose, long since forgotten, 
much more our own good beginning at — Birmingham — was it? I 
forget, myself, now. 



260 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

One more instance of the things you don't care for, that 
are vital to you, may be better told now than hereafter. 

In my plan for our practical work, in last number, you 
remember I said, we must try and make some pottery, and 
have some music, and that we would have no steam-engines. 
On this I received a singular letter from a resident at 
Birmingham, advising me that the colors for my pottery 
must be ground by steam, and my musical instruments 
constructed by it. To this, as my correspondent was an 
educated person, and knew Latin, I ventured to answer that 
porcelain had been painted before the time of James Watt ; 
that even music was not entirely a recent invention ; that 
my poor company, I feared, would deserve no better colors 
than Apelles and Titian made shift with, or even the 
Chinese ; and that I could not find any notice of musical 
instruments in the time of David, for instance, having been 
made by steam. 

To this my correspondent again replied that he supposed 
David's "twangling upon the harp" would have been unsat- 
isfactory to modern taste ; in which sentiment I concurred 
with him (thinking of the Cumberland procession, without 
dancing, after its sacred, cylindrical Ark). We shall have 
to be content, however, for our part, with a little "twang- 
ling" on such roughly-made harps, or even shells, as the 
Jews and Greeks got their melody out of, though it must 
indeed be little conceivable in a modern manufacturing 
town that a nation could ever have existed which imagina- 
rily dined on onions in Heaven, and made harps of the 
near relations of turtles on Earth. But, to keep to our 
crockery, you know I told you that for some time we should 
not be able to put any pictures of Gods on it; and you 
might think that would be of small consequence : but it is 
of moment that we should at least try — for indeed that old 
French potter, Palissy, was nearly the last of potters in 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 26 1 

France, or England either, who could have done so, if any- 
body had wanted Gods. But nobody in his time did ; — 
they only wanted Goddesses, of a demi-divine-monde 
pattern ; Palissy, not well able to produce such, took to 
moulding innocent frogs and vipers instead, in his dishes ; 
but at Sevres and other places for shaping of courtly clay, 
the charmingest things were done, as you probably saw 
at the great peace-promoting Exhibition of 185 1; and not 
only the first rough potter's fields, tileries, as they called 
them, or Tuileries, but the little den where Palissy long after 
worked under the Louvre, were effaced and forgotten in the 
glory of the House of France ; until the House of France 
forgot also that to it, no less than the House of Israel, the 
words were spoken, not by a painted God, "As the clay is 
in the hands of the potter, so are ye in mine" ; and thus the 
stained and vitrified show of it lasted, as you have seen, 
until the Tuileries again become the Potter's field, to bury, 
not strangers in, but their own souls, no more ashamed of 
Traitorhood, but invoking Traitorhood, as if it covered, 
instead of constituting, uttermost shame; — until, of the 
kingdom and its glory there is not a shard left, to take fire 
out of the hearth. 

Left — to men's eyes, I should have written. To their 
thoughts, is left yet much ; for true kingdoms and true 
glories cannot pass away. What France has had of such 
remain to her. What any of us can find of such, will 
remain to us. Will you look back, for an instant, again to 
the end of my last letter, page 99, and consider the state of 
life described there : — " No liberty, but instant obedience 
to known law and appointed persons ; no equality, but 
recognition of every betterness and reprobation of every 
worseness ; and none idle but the dead." 

I beg you to observe that last condition especially. You 
will debate for many a day to come the causes that have 



262 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

brought this misery upon France, and there are many ; but 
one is chief — chief cause, now and always, of evil every- 
where ; and I see it at this moment, in its deadliest form, 
out of the window of my quiet English inn. It is the 21st 
of May, and a bright morning, and the sun shines, for 
once, warmly on the wall opposite, a low one, of ornamental 
pattern, imitative in brick of wood-work (as if it had been 
of wood-work, it would, doubtless, have been painted to 
look like brick). Against this low decorative edifice leans 
a ruddy-faced English boy of seventeen or eighteen, in a 
white blouse and brown corduroy trousers, and a domical 
felt hat ; with the sun, as much as can get under the rim, 
on his face, and his hands in his pockets ; listlessly watch- 
ing two dogs at play. He is a good boy, evidently, and 
does not care to turn the play into a fight ; x still it is not 
interesting enough to him, as play, to relieve the extreme 
distress of his idleness, and he occasionally takes his hands 
out of his pockets, and claps them at the dogs to startle 
them. 

The ornamental wall he leans against surrounds the 
county police-office, and the residence at the end of it, 
appropriately called " Gaol Lodge." This county gaol, 
police-office, and a large gasometer, have been built by the 
good people of Abingdon to adorn the principal entrance 
to their town from the south. It was once quite one of the 
loveliest, as well as historically interesting, scenes in Eng- 
land. A few cottages and their gardens, sloping down to 
the river-side, are still left, and an arch or two of the 
great monastery ; but the principal object from the road 
is now the gaol, and from the river the gasometer. It is 
curious that since the English have believed (as you will 
find the editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, quoting to 

1 This was at seven in the morning; he had them fighting at half-past 
nine. 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 263 

you from Macaulay, in his leader of the 9th of this month), 
" the only cure for Liberty is more liberty " (which is true 
enough, for when you have got all you can, you will be 
past physic), they always make their gaols conspicuous 
and ornamental. Now, I have no objection, myself, detest- 
ing, as I do, every approach to liberty, to a distinct mani- 
festation of gaol, in proper quarters ; nay, in the highest, 
and in the close neighborhood of palaces ; perhaps, even, 
with a convenient passage, and Ponte de' Sospiri, from one 
to the other, or, at least, a pleasant access by water-gate 
and down the river ; but I do not see why in these days of 
" incurable " liberty, the prospect in approaching a quiet 
English county town should be gaol, and nothing else. 

That being so, however, the country-boy, in his white 
blouse, leans placidly against the prison-wall this bright 
Sunday morning, little thinking what a luminous sign-post 
he is making of himself, and living gnomon of sun-dial, of 
which the shadow points sharply to the subtlest cause of the 
fall of France, and of England, as is too likely, after her. 

Your hands in your own pockets, in the morning. That 
is the beginning of the last day ; your hands in other 
people's pockets at noon ; that is the height of the last 
day ; and the gaol, ornamented or otherwise (assuredly the 
great gaol of the grave), for the night. That is the history 
of nations under judgment. Don't think I say this to any 
single class ; least of all specially to you ; the rich are con- 
tinually, now-a-days, reproaching you with your wish to be 
idle. It is very wrong of you ; but, do they want to work 
all day, themselves ? All mouths are very properly open 
now against the Paris Communists because they fight that 
they may get wages for marching about with flags. What 
do the upper classes fight for, then ? What have they 
fought for since the world became upper and lower, but 
that they also might have wages for walking about with 



264 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

flags, and that mischievously? It is very wrong of the 
Communists to steal church-plate and candlesticks. Very 
wrong indeed ; and much good may they get of their pawn- 
brokers' tickets. Have you any notion (I mean that you 
shall have some soon), how much the fathers and fathers' 
fathers of these men, for a thousand years back, have paid 
their priests, to keep them in plate and candlesticks ? You 
need not think I am a republican, or that I like to see 
priests ill-treated, and their candlesticks carried off. I 
have many friends among priests, and should have had 
more had I not long been trying to make them see that 
they have long trusted too much in candlesticks, not quite 
enough in candles ; not at all enough in the sun, and least 
of all enough in the sun's Maker. Scientific people indeed 
of late opine the sun to have been produced by collision, 
and to be a splendidly permanent railroad accident, or 
explosive Elysium : also I noticed, only yesterday, that 
gravitation itself is announced to the members of the 
Royal Institution as the result of vibratory motion. Some 
day, perhaps, the members of the Royal Institution will 
proceed to enquire after the cause of — vibratory motion. 
Be that as it may, the Beginning, or Prince of Vibration, 
as modern science has it, — Prince of Peace, as old science 
had it, — continues through all scientific analysis, His own 
arrangements about the sun, as also about other lights, 
lately hidden, or burning low. And these are primarily, 
that He has appointed a great power to rise and set in 
heaven, which gives life, and warmth, and motion, to the 
bodies of men, and beasts, creeping things, and flowers ; 
and which also causes light and color in the eyes of things 
that have eyes. And he has set above the souls of men, on 
earth, a great law or Sun of Justice or Righteousness, which 
brings also life and health in the daily strength and spread- 
ing of it, being spoken of in the priests' language (which 



FORS CLAVIGERA. 265 

they never explained to anybody, and now wonder that 
nobody understands), as having "healing in its wings": 
and the obedience to this law, as it gives strength to the 
heart, so it gives light to the eyes of souls that have got 
any eyes, so that they begin to see each other as lovely, 
and to love each other. That is the final law respecting 
the sun, and all manner of minor lights and candles, down 
to rush-lights ; and I once got it fairly explained, two years 
ago, to an intelligent and obliging wax-and-tallow chandler 
at Abbeville, in whose shop I used to sit sketching in rainy 
days ; and watching the cartloads of ornamental candles 
which he used to supply for the church at the far east end 
of the town (I forget what saint it belongs to, but it is 
opposite the late Emperor's large new cavalry barracks), 
where the young ladies of the better class in Abbeville had 
just got up a beautiful evening service, with a pyramid of 
candles which it took at least half-an-hour to light, and as 
long to put out again, and which, when lighted up to the 
top of the church, were only to be looked at themselves, 
and sung to, and not to light anybody, or anything. I got 
the tallow-chandler to calculate vaguely the probable cost of 
the candles lighted in this manner, every day, in all the 
churches of France ; and then I asked him how many 
cottagers' wives he knew round Abbeville itself who could 
afford, without pinching, either dip or mould in the evening 
to make their children's clothes by, and whether, if the pink 
and green bees-wax of the district were divided every after- 
noon among them, it might not be quite as honorable to 
God, and as good for the candle-trade ? Which he admitted 
readily enough ; but what I should have tried to convince 
the young ladies themselves of, at the evening service, would 
probably not have been admitted so readily ; — that they 
themselves were nothing more than an extremely graceful 
kind of wax-tapers which had got into their heads that they 



266 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

were only to be looked at, for the honor of God, and not to 
light anybody. 

Which is indeed too much the notion of even the mascu- 
line aristocracy of Europe at this day. One can imagine 
them, indeed, modest in the matter of their own luminous- 
ness, and more timid of the tax on agricultural horses and 
carts, than of that on lucifers ; but it would be well if they 
were content, here in England, however dimly phosphores- 
cent themselves, to bask in the sunshine of May at the end 
of Westminster Bridge (as my boy on Abingdon Bridge), 
with their backs against the large edifice they have built 
there, an edifice, by the way, to my own poor judgment less 
contributing to the adornment of London, than the new 
police-office to that of Abingdon. But the English squire, 
after his fashion, sends himself to that highly decorated gaol 
all spring-time ; and cannot be content with his hands in his 
own pockets, nor even in yours and mine ; but claps and 
laughs, semi-idiot that he is, at dog-fights on the floor of the 
House, which, if he knew it, are indeed dog-fights of the 
Stars in their courses, Sirius against Procyon ; and of the 
havock and loosed dogs of war, makes, as The Times' cor- 
respondent says they make, at Versailles, of the siege of 
Paris, "the Entertainment of the Hour." 

You think that, perhaps, an unjust saying of him, as he 
will, assuredly himself. He would fain put an end to this 
wild work, if he could, he thinks. 

My friends, I tell you solemnly, the sin of it all, down to 
this last night's doing, or undoing, (for it is Monday now, 
I waited before finishing my letter, to see if the Sainte 
Chapelle would follow the Vendome Column ;) the sin of it, 
I tell you, is not that poor rabble's ; spade and pickaxe 
in hand among the dead ; nor yet the blasphemer's, making 
noise like a dog by the defiled altars of our Lady of Vic- 
tories ; and round the barricades, and the ruins, of the 
Street of Peace. 



ANNOTATIONS. 267 

This cruelty has been done by the kindest of us, and the 
most honorable ; by the delicate women, by the nobly-nur- 
tured men, who through their happy and, as they thought, 
holy lives, have sought, and still seek, only "the entertain- 
ment of the hour." And this robbery has been taught to 
the hands, — this blasphemy to the lips, — of the lost poor, 
by the False Prophets who have taken the name of Christ in 
vain, and leagued themselves with his chief enemy, " Covet- 
ousness, which is idolatry." 

Covetousness, lady of Competition and of deadly Care ; 
idol above the altars of Ignoble Victory ; builder of streets, 
in cities of Ignoble Peace. I have given you the picture of 
her — your goddess and only Hope — as Giotto saw her: 
dominant in prosperous Italy as in prosperous England; and 
having her hands clawed then, as now, so that she can only 
clutch, not work ; also you shall read next month with me 
what one of Giotto's friends says of her — a rude versifier, 
one of the twangling harpers ; as Giotto was a poor painter 
for low price, and with colors ground by hand ; but such 
cheap work must serve our turn for this time. 

Faithfully yours, 

JOHN RUSKIN. 



ANNOTATIONS. 
LETTER I. 

Page 179. Garibaldi (Gar-i-balcTee) : a distinguished Italian 
patriot who aided in gaining independence for Italy. 

1 80. Robin Hood : a famous English outlaw whose valorous deeds, 
generosity, and skill in archery are the themes of many ballads. 
His favorite haunt was Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire. He 
is said to have robbed only the rich, and to have given largely to 
the poor. 



268 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

Sir John Hawkwood: an English military adventurer of the 
14th century. His band ravaged the Florentine territory in Italy. 

Tortona: a town of Sardinian Italy. 

182. Michael Angelo: a great Italian painter and sculptor 
(1475-1563). 

185. Giggleswick: a Yorkshire parish in West Riding, on the 
river Ribble ; seat of a celebrated grammar school founded by 
Edward VT. The other places named in this connection are in 
the same part of England. 



LETTER II. 



191. Hercules: a Greek hero renowned for strength, which he 
used in performing deeds of superhuman valor for the good of 
mankind. 

Ulysses : the hero of the " Odyssey," whom Homer called the 
"much-suffering Ulysses." 

Theseus : a mythical hero of Greece. 

192. Lycurgus: a Spartan law-giver. 

The Elgin room is in the British Museum at Kensington : so 
called because the Grecian marbles collected by Lord Elgin are 
kept there. 

The notables/ crown : an allusion to the famous iron crown of 
the Lombards with which Charlemagne had himself crowned. 

Ricardo : an English political economist. 

193. The Cambridge catechism: refers to a Manual of Political 
Economy by John Stuart Mill; whom Ruskin calls, sarcastically, 
"The Greatest thinker of England." 

196. Aberfoil: a parish in Perthshire, Scotland, scene of a large 
part of Scott's " Rob Roy." 

Nicol Jarvie: a Glasgow magistrate in " Rob Roy." 

201. LaTraviata: a well-known opera. 

Don Juan or Don Giovanni: prince of Spanish libertines, whose 
career has been made the subject of an opera by Mozart. 

Dean Stanley: a distinguished clergyman and writer; made 
Dean of Westminster in 1864. 



ANNOTATIONS. 269 

201. Fra Angelico: a celebrated Italian painter (1387—1455). 

Jan. 17, iSji : The extract refers to the horrors of the siege of 
Paris by the Germans. 

204. Woolwich: a naval port, nine miles from London ; seat of 
the largest arsenal in Great ■ Britain and of a royal military 
academy. 

Wapping : a suburb of London bordering on the Thames. 



LETTER III. 



207. St. Louis: Louis IX of France, a leader of the seventh 
and eighth Crusades. 

A Nation's Husband: Frederick William I, second king of 
Prussia, whose reign was marked by economy and great adminis- 
trative power. 

210. Soles: salt-water fish. 

211. Tenterden Steeple: referring to the church tower in Ten- 
terden, a town built on an eminence in Kent. 

212. One of your own kings: Henry II, whose wife, Eleanor, 
instigated her sons to rebel against their father. 

213. The blood burst from his nostrils: an allusion to an old 
belief that if a murderer should come into the presence of his 
victim, blood would flow from the corpse. 

Rosamond's son: Geoffrey, who became Archbishop of York ; 
son of Henry II and his mistress, Rosamond Clifford. 
The prince who stood tinforgiven : Richard I. 

214. Temple Bar: an edifice in London, used for holding the 
two inns of court. The workmen referred to are lawyers ; those 
of Woolwich dockyards are shipbuilders. 

2 1 7. Ascalon : a port of Syria to which Richard retreated after 
giving up the attempt to take Jerusalem. 

Poitou : a former French province. 

218. Vidomar: a French vassal of Richard I. 



27O FORS CLAVIGERA. 



LETTER IV. 



222. John Kepler: a German astronomer (1 571-1630), who 
discovered the laws of planetary motion. 

Sir Henry Wotton: an English author (1 568-1639). 

Donau : the Danube river. 

224. Vulgarising his terms: expressing his ideas in plain, 
every-day English. 

226. Thirty pieces : see Matt. xxvi. 14-16. 

227. Paul Veronese: an Italian painter of the 16th century. 
The Duke of Bedford : commander of the English forces in the 

invasion of France in the 15th century. 

Joan of Arc : the peasant girl of Domrdmy, by whose inspira- 
tion the French were enabled to defeat the English. She was 
afterwards given up on a charge of sorcery, and burned at the 
stake. 

The Bastard of Vendome: the Duke of Orleans, leader of the 
French troops in the same war. 

228. Marylebone: a suburb of London where Ruskin, aided by 
Miss Octavia Hill, attempted, by offering comfortable houses at a 
low rent, to induce the poor to live in a wholesome manner. 

229. Sitting at the receipt of Custom : see Luke v. 27. 

230. Froissart: a French chronicler of the 14th century. 

234. Cr£cy, Agincourt and Poictiers are all scenes of English 
victories during the Hundred Years' War. 

235. That worthy and economical king: Stephen I. 
Lown: foolish fellow. 

Harry Switch of Broom: Henry II, first of the Plantagenet 
line, so-called from the broom plant (planta genesta) which was 
adopted as the family symbol. 

236. Dion : a Greek rhetorician whose writings are distinguished 
for elegance of style. 

Samson's lion: see Judges xiv. 5-14. 
Virgil : a great Latin poet, author of the Aeneid. 
Pliny, the Elder : a Roman writer (23-79 a.d.), author of a 
work on Natural History. 



ANNOTATIONS. 2J\ 



LETTER V. 



237. A king's love-song: see Solomon's Song ii. 11-13. 

238. Samaritan woman : see John iv. 
240. Iota: the Greek letter I. 

242. Goethe: a distinguished German poet (1 749-1832). 

The father of English poetry : Chaucer, who lived in the 
r 4th century. This refers to one of his poems, "The Flower and 
the Leaf," in which the leaf is used as the symbol of constancy. 

243. Albert Durer: a celebrated German painter (147 1 -1528). 

244. Vale of Tempe : a beautiful valley in Greece, between Mt. 
Olympus and Mt. Ossa. 

Apollo: the sun-god ; embodiment of wisdom ; hence the patron 
of music, poetry, etc. 

247. Arcadia: a state of southern Greece, noted for its abundant 
pasturage. 

250. Demeter: Ceres, goddess of agriculture. 

251. Tisiphone: one of the three Furies, who sits at hell-gate, 
armed with a whip. 

254. An excellefit old potter in France: Bernard Palissy 
(15 10-1590). 

Magi: see Matt. ii. 1-11. 



LETTER VI. 



258. The Empress Maude: Matilda, daughter of Henry I and 
mother of Henry II. The reference is to her flight from Arundel 
Castle during the civil war which she had instituted in order to 
eject Stephen from the throne of England. 

The college of the gracious Apostle St. John: one of the 
colleges of Cambridge University ; it was founded in 151 1. 

Marathon: a battle fought between the Greeks and the in- 
vading Persians, in which the former were victorious, — 490 B.C. 

259. Lucian : a Greek author and rhetorician of the 2d century. 



272 FORS CLAVIGERA. 

260. Apelles : the most celebrated of Greek painters. 

Titian : one of the greatest of Italian painters (1477-1576). 

'■'■Made har-ps of the near relations of turtles ": an allusion to 
the fabled origin of the lyre, viz., by stretched cords across a 
tortoise shell. 

263. Ponte de' Sospiri: the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, which 
connects the Doge's palace with the prison : so-called because 
condemned prisoners crossed it only to meet their death. 



This is true of all Greek myths, that they have many opposite lights 
and shades ; they are as changeful as opal, and, like opal, usually have 
one color by reflected, and another by transmitted light. But they are 
true jewels for all that, and full of noble enchantment for those who 
can use them. — Ruskin. 



This is the thing which I know — that in Reverence is the chief joy 
and power of life ; — Reverence for that which is pure and bright in 
your own youth, for what is true and tried in the age of others ; for all 
that is gracious among the living, great among the dead, and marvelous 
in the Powers that cannot die. — Letters. 



THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 



INTRODUCTORY. 
I. 

It was formerly customary to consider myths as the 
fanciful, grotesque product of a diseased imagination, or a 
corrupt moral state. The work of philologists like Max 
Miiller,. however, has discovered a poetic symbolism in 
mythical names, that throws light upon the meaning of many 
dark fables and allegories. The reverent spirit of Mr. 
Ruskin, combined with his keen sense of beauty, makes 
him especially fitted to become, the interpreter of the 
spiritual meaning in the Greek myths. 

The first condition of understanding them is, as he says, 
to rid ourselves of the notion that the thoughts of the old 
time were nothing but superstitious folly. For a myth is, 
in truth, a story with a meaning other than appears from 
the every-day use of the words. To discover and interpret 
this hidden meaning is the task of the thoughtful student. 
To the Greek mind, Hercules was no mere dragon-killer, 
but the "perpetual type and mirror of heroism." 

Some myths were, undoubtedly, based upon an actual 
historical occurrence, but to ferret out the incident which 
gave rise to the legend is, at this day, well-nigh impossible. 
But the same sky is over our heads as overarched the hills 
of Greece, and since Nature speaks to us also with the 



276 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

same voices, if we listen to these voices with reverent love, 
we may learn to understand the language of ancient myth. 

Every great myth, Mr. Ruskin thinks, has its root in 
some physical phenomenon ; but it has grown in two direc- 
tions : first, the imagination has clothed it with a personal 
reality, so that it has become to man an embodiment of 
human passion ; second, it has become transfigured with 
a spiritual significance, so that it is a teacher of moral 
truth. 

Greek mythology contains a symbolic expression of 
religious belief. From its study, we may learn what the 
Greeks thought about God, and duty, and the soul. Greek 
religion reached its highest, and, therefore, its purest 
development in the fifth century B.C. An examination of 
it, at this culminating period, shows a belief in one govern- 
ing Lord and four subordinate elemental forces, each 
commanded by a Spirit : the earth, presided over by 
Demeter, who is, therefore, called the Earth-mother ; the 
sea, whose ruler is Neptune ; fire, or pure light, governed 
by the sun-god, Apollo ; and the air, whose penetrating 
presence fitly typifies the Spirit of Wisdom — Athena, the 
Queen of the Air. Since the Spirit of Wisdom is the Lord 
of Life, this is the myth selected by Mr. Ruskin for special 
interpretation. 

In the form which Greek imagination gave to Athena, the 
four cardinal virtues are symbolized. Prudence, or fore- 
sight, is indicated by her attribute, owl-eyed ; Justice (" the 
righteous bestowal of favor or indignation ") clothes her 
now with a robe of light, to denote her pleased approval of 
the good, now with a serpent-fringed garment fastened with 
the aegis, on which appears a Gorgon head, to express 
vengeful wrath against evil ; Fortitude crowns her with the 
crested helmet ; and Temperance keeps her always the 
embodiment of stainless virtue. 



INTRODUCTORY. 277 

As Queen of the Air, a large circle of myths gather 
about her name as a center. Aeolus is ruler of the 
winds : he dwells in a floating island with his twelve strong 
children, whose very variableness is a source of blessing to 
man ; — evidence of the thoughtful beneficence of Divine 
Wisdom ; they are the bringers of health and a store of 
wealth. Boreas, the north wind, purifies the air which the 
Harpies, tropical winds, had befouled with miasma. The 
deeper spiritual significance is seen in the action of hot 
gusts of passion, which, sweeping over the soul, do, like 
the Harpies, defile and destroy. 

Sisters of the Harpies are the Sirens, whose songs entice 
as do the constant, never-satisfied desires for pleasure. But 
the yielding to these lower animal desires must bring pun- 
ishment. To describe the heart-sickness that follows as a 
natural consequence of such unworthy action the Greeks 
invented several myths, such as that of Tantalus, who was 
punished for gluttony by being made to suffer agnawing hunger 
which he could never satisfy, and that of the daughters of 
Pandareos, who, though taught by goddesses, were led away 
by vain, selfish desires and became slaves of the Furies. 

Physically, the second division of Athena myths includes 
those of the clouds. The highest cloud deity, Hermes, or 
Mercury, has a wide ministry, by means of the beneficent 
dew and rain. As clouds hide the brightness of the sun, 
however, so to Hermes are attributed the habits of conceal- 
ment, and theft, and lying. Mountains are the great cloud- 
gatherers and mist-formers ; hence the birthplace of Hermes 
is said to be the Arcadian mountains. As he rises in a 
fleecy cloud, he blinds the eyes of Argus, i.e., he shuts out 
the stars from the sight of men. 

In the days when wealth consisted largely in flocks and 
herds, it was natural that the deity of woolly, fleecy clouds 
should become the god of commerce. 



278 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Devotion to gain, however, is likely to degenerate into 
avarice, so Hermes became eventually the deceiver of the 
minds of men with false dreams of covetousness, and the 
fable of Sisyphus denotes the punishment of the rage for 
gain. 

In the myths of Semele, mother of Bacchus, is hinted the 
fruit-giving power of the cloud. Connected with these is 
the cycle of Gorgonian myths, which symbolize the storm 
and the tempest, whose office is to purify by destroying 
evil. 

The functions of Athena as the ambient air with all its 
freight of cloud, etc., are five-fold. 

First, — she is air as the spirit of life. By reference to 
familiar experience, the health-giving power of "Athena is 
made to serve in the interpretation of Homer's language 
descriptive of the acts of the goddess of Wisdom, as she 
imparts strength to the warrior's arm, adds beauty and grace 
to the womanly dignity of Penelope, and calms unworthy 
passion. 

Secondly, — Athena is the air giving vegetative impulse to 
the earth.. Therefore she lives in the lilies of the field and 
the trees of the forest ; and she is the guardian of the 
spring, when everything wakes to newness of life. 

Thirdly, — Athena is the air in its power over the sea. 
That the Greeks thought of her in this way is proved by the 
fact that Athena is sometimes represented with a dolphin on 
her shield. 

Fourthly, — Athena is the air nourishing artificial light. 
Thus she represents the illumination of the spirit by the 
light of truth. 

Lastly, — Athena is the air conveying vibration of sound. 

As the sun — Apollo — is thought of as the master of time 
and rhythm, so the air, — Athena, — the sustaining power of 
the voice, is the symbol of moral passion. 



INTRODUCTORY. 279 

Therefore it is that so many music myths are associated 
with Athena. The ethical influence of music in education 
was perfectly understood by the Greeks. Noble music is 
the most effective of all instruments of moral instruction, 
but if employed to express sensual passion, its influence is 
vicious. 

With such high faith and earnest moral purpose were the 
great Greek myths invented, and they became inspiring 
motives to noble conduct. 



II. 

Athena as the Spirit of Life in material organism is the 
theme of the second division of this study. 

The mystery of life is the undiscovered secret which 
baffles the utmost effort of chemical analysis. To have 
resolved all living form into its ultimate element, proto- 
plasm, is to have given it a name, but here, as every- 
where, the letter killeth : the Spirit which giveth life defies 
all analysis. Nevertheless, Spirit is the great reality, and 
that the Greeks well understood this fact is evident from 
their representing Athena spiritually, as the "queen of all 
glowing virtue, the unconsuming fire and inner lamp of 
life." 

This is the vitalizing power that catches from chaos the 
elements of charcoal, lime, etc., and gives them form in 
plant and animal, 

In glowing language Mr. Ruskin portrays the rapturous 
life of the plant which finds expression in the beauty of the 
flower. The bird's form seems to be merely a chamber for 
imprisoned air ; its song sounds like the wild voice of the 
wind-cloud ; its plumes gleam with the gold, and ruby, and 
vermilion of the cloud crest, or deepen into the "melted 



28o THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

blue of the deep wells of the sky." "And so the Spirit of 
the Air is put into this created form" which has been, in 
all ages, the symbol of the divine Spirit of blessing. The 
varied symbolism in the serpent-myths of different countries 
marks the mysterious, fascinating influence produced upon 
the mind by the arrowy, soundless movement of that " run- 
ning brook of horror." 

Mr. Ruskin thinks that the myths of bird and serpent 
reveal the fineness of intelligence and the state of morals 
in the people who invent them. 

To the races whose ideal was purity and immortality, the 
serpent and vulture served as lofty emblems ; but, when they 
were conscious of loss of moral vigor, the serpent became a 
fiery scourge, and the vulture an eating vengeance. 

" The groves were God's first temples." Tree-worship 
prevailed among all early nations. The wind whispered to 
them from the leaves ; and, in the sheltering branches, they 
felt the protecting presence of God. With subtle analysis, 
Mr. Ruskin unfolds the secrets hidden in the various plant 
and flower myths, and discovers their ethical teachings. In 
all the manifold forms of nature resides an effluence of 
divine intelligence whose power man has felt, and, accord- 
ing to his own virtue and passion, has interpreted in the 
language of myth. 

As Athena is a "goddess of counsel, she has 'eyes full 
of light ' ; so color plays a prominent part in the Greek con- 
ception of this goddess ; the flesh was snow-white, the keen 
eyes were pale blue ; a crocus-colored robe extended to her 
feet with an aegis of thunderous purple; and her noble head 
was crowned with a golden helmet." With the colors of the 
iris, the Spirit of Wisdom dyes the earth tapestry woven by 
her deft fingers. 






INTRODUCTORY. 



III. 



Athena in the Heart means the wisdom that inspires 
human virtue and human art. Mr. Ruskin discriminates 
between the intellectual wisdom as displayed by the Muses, 
and the wise guidance of life and inventive art as controlled 
by the moral passion of Athena. 

Here Mr. Ruskin reaffirms his belief that all art is, in its 
roots, moral : for in the work of his hand man has revealed 
his own weakness or virtue ; so the nature and quality of his 
art creations become the infallible measure of his moral 
state. It has been only through perseverance in Tightness 
of conduct for several generations that high human art has 
been possible. 

The law of life is inexorable. Every fault or folly 
lessens the power to do and to enjoy; every effort after 
Tightness of action strengthens the will and enlightens the 
judgment. 

Athena was, to the Greeks, the warrior maid ; for the 
qualities developed and manifested in righteous warfare are 
the qualities essential to virtue, the valor of the soul. Al- 
though Mr. Ruskin generally opposes war as unreasoning 
cruelty and wicked sacrifice of life, yet he maintains that 
the soldier nation cultivates manhood, while the mercantile 
nation thinks only of increasing its possessions, and thus 
"its moral and poetic powers vanish." 

Athena was also the presiding genius of industry. But 
national economy is wise only when its industries are so 
regulated that the willing laborer shall find wholesome 
employment and receive a just reward for his labor ; for the 
well-being of a nation depends upon the number of its hap- 
pily and usefully employed citizens. 

The principles of public economy which Mr. Ruskin had 
so earnestly advocated in his previous writings are here 



282 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

shown to proceed from the Spirit of Wisdom, which is Athena 
in the Heart. 

It is Mr. Ruskin's theory that the state can never do per- 
fect justice until labor shall be organized and directed by 
the Government. An important part of this provision for 
the public welfare is the establishing of schools for training 
in all the arts. 

To set a proper estimate upon the worth of all work, — our 
own, as well as others, — we must apply the measure of 
Modesty which is not Self-depreciation, but the just estima- 
tion of one's powers. This test, universally applied, will lead 
to each person's working in his own true place, i.e., the place 
for which he is fitted. 

The second function of Modesty, the recognition of law, 
and the delight in obedience to just law, is opposed to that 
Spirit of License which often hides itself under the name of 
Liberty. 

The words freedom and liberty are often wildly used. 
True freedom, found only in obedience to higher law, is what 
Mr. Ruskin is really advocating under all his satire upon 
the freedom which unthinking or lawless people seek. 

By contrasting the work produced by erratic followers of 
what is falsely called freedom, and that of those who hold 
their genius under the control of law, Mr. Ruskin makes his 
real attitude known. 

He finds in Greek art, " sound knowledge, simple aims, 
mastered craft, vivid invention, strong common sense, and 
eternally true and wise meaning": therefore he advises its 
study, not for imitation, but for inspiration. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 2S3 

I. ATHENA CIIALINITIS. 1 

ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 

Lecture on the Greek Myths of Storm, given {partly') in University Col- 
lege, London, March gth, 1S69. 

i. I will not ask your pardon for endeavoring to inter- 
est you in the subject of Greek Mythology; but I must ask 
your permission to approach it in a temper differing from 
that in which it is frequently treated. We cannot justly 
interpret the religion of any people, unless we are prepared 
to admit that we ourselves, as well as they, are liable to 
error in matters of faith; and that the convictions of others, 
however singular, may, in some points, have been well 
founded, while our own, however reasonable, may, in some 
particulars, be mistaken. You must forgive me, therefore, 
for not always distinctively calling the creeds of the past 
"superstition," and the creeds of the present day "relig- 
ion"; as well as for assuming that a faith now confessed 
may sometimes be superficial, and that a faith long forgotten 
may once have been sincere. It is the task of the Divine 
to condemn the errors of antiquity, and of the Philologist 
to account for them ; I will only pray you to read, with 
patience, and human sympathy, the thoughts of men who 
lived without blame in a darkness they could not dispel ; 
and to remember that, whatever charge of folly may justly 
attach to the saying, — -"There is no God," the folly is 
prouder, deeper, and less pardonable, in saying, "There is 
no God but for me." 

2. A Myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a 
meaning attached to it, other than it seems to have at first ; 

1 "Athena the Kestrainer." The name is given to her as having 
helped Bellerophon to bridle Pegasus, the flying cloud. 



284 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

and the fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked 
by some of its circumstances being extraordinary, or, in 
the common use of the word, unnatural. Thus, if I tell 
you that Hercules killed a water-serpent in the lake of 
Lenna, and if I mean, and you understand, nothing more 
than that fact, the story, whether true or false, is not a myth. 
But if by telling you this, I mean that Hercules purified the 
stagnation of many streams from deadly miasmata, my 
story, however simple, is a true myth ; only, as, if I had left 
it in that simplicity, you would probably look for nothing 
beyond, it will be wise in me to surprise your attention by 
adding some singular circumstance ; for instance, that the 
water-snake had several heads, which revived as fast as 
they were killed, and which poisoned even the foot that 
trode upon them as they slept. And in proportion to the 
fullness of intended meaning I shall probably multiply and 
refine upon these improbabilities ; as, suppose, if, instead 
of desiring only to tell you that Hercules purified a marsh, 
I wished you to understand that he contended with the 
venom and vapor of envy and evil ambition, whether in 
other men's souls or in his own, and choked that malaria 
only by supreme toil, — I might tell you that this serpent 
was formed by the Goddess whose pride was in the trial 
of Hercules ; and that its place of abode was by a palm- 
tree ; and that for every head of it that was cut off, two 
rose up with renewed life ; and that the hero found at last 
he could not kill the creature at all by cutting its heads off 
or crushing them ; but only by burning them down ; and that 
the midmost of them could not be killed even that way, but 
had to be buried alive. Only in proportion as I mean more, 
I shall certainly appear more absurd in my statement ; and 
at last, when I get unendurably significant, all practical 
persons will agree that I was talking mere nonsense from 
the beginning, and never meant anything at all. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 285 

3. It is just possible, however, also, that the story-teller 
may all along have meant nothing but what he said ; and 
that, incredible as the events may appear, he himself liter- 
ally believed — and expected you also to believe — all this 
about Hercules, without any latent moral or history what- 
ever. And it is very necessary, in reading traditions of 
this kind, to determine, first of all, whether you are listen- 
ing to a simple person, who is relating what, at all events, 
he believes to be true (and may, therefore, possibly have 
been so to some extent), or to a reserved philosopher, who 
is veiling a theory of the universe under the grotesque of 
a fairy tale. It is, in general, more likely that the first 
supposition should be the right one ; — simple and credu- 
lous persons are, perhaps fortunately, more common than 
philosophers ; and it is of the highest importance that you 
should take their innocent testimony as it was meant, and 
not efface, under the graceful explanation which your culti- 
vated ingenuity may suggest, either the evidence their 
story may contain (such as it is worth) of an extraordinary 
event having really taken place, or the unquestionable light 
which it will cast upon the character of the person by 
whom it was frankly believed. And to deal with Greek 
religion honestly, you must at once understand that this 
literal belief was, in the mind of the general people, as 
deeply rooted as ours in the legends of our own sacred 
book ; and that a basis of unmiraculous event was as little 
suspected, and an explanatory symbolism as rarely traced, 
by them, as by us. 

You must, therefore, observe that I deeply degrade the 
position which such a myth as that just referred to occupied 
in the Greek mind, by comparing it (for fear of offending 
you) to our story of St. George and the Dragon. Still, 
the analogy is perfect in minor respects ; and though it 
fails to give you any notion of the vitally religious earnest- 



286 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

ness of the Greek faith, it wiil exactly illustrate the manner 
in which faith laid hold of its objects. 

4. This story of Hercules and the Hydra, then, was to 
the general Greek mind, in its best days, a tale about a 
real hero and a real monster. Not one in a thousand knew 
anything of the way in which the story had arisen, any 
more than the English peasant generally is aware of the 
plebeian origin of St. George ; or supposes that there were 
once alive in the world, with sharp teeth and claws, real, 
and very ugly, flying dragons. On the other hand, few 
persons traced any moral or symbolical meaning in the 
story, and the average Greek was as far from imagining 
any interpretation like that I have just given you, as an 
average Englishman is from seeing in St. George, the Red 
Cross Knight of Spenser, or in the Dragon, the Spirit of 
Infidelity. But, for all that, there was a certain under- 
current of consciousness in all minds, that the figures 
meant more than they at first showed ; and, according to 
each man's own faculties of sentiment, he judged and read 
them ; just as a Knight of the Garter reads more in the 
jewel on his collar than the George and Dragon of a 
public-house expresses to the host or to his customers. 
Thus, to the mean person the myth always meant little ; to 
the noble person, much ; and the greater their familiarity 
with it, the more contemptible it became to the one, and 
the more sacred to the other ; until vulgar commentators 
explained it entirely away, while Virgil made it the crowning 
glory of his choral hymn to Hercules :■ — 

" Around thee, powerless to infect thy soul, 
Rose, in his crested crowd, the Lerna worm." 

" Non te rationis egentem 
Lernaeus turba capitum circumstetit anguis." 

And although, in any special toil of the hero's life, the 
moral interpretation was rarely with definiteness attached 



ATHENA I.N THE HEAVENS. 287 

to its event, yet in the whole course of the life, not only a 
symbolical meaning, but the warrant for the existence of 
a real spiritual power, was apprehended of all men. Her- 
cules was no dead hero, to be remembered only as a victor 
over monsters of the past- — harmless now, as slain. He 
was the perpetual type and mirror of heroism, and its pres- 
ent and living aid against every ravenous form of human 
trial and pain. 

5. But, if we seek to know more than this, and to ascer- 
tain the manner in which the story first crystallized into its 
shape, we shall find ourselves led back generally to one or 
other of two sources — either to actual historical events, 
represented by the fancy under figures personifying them ; 
or else to natural phenomena similarly endowed with life 
by the imaginative power, usually more or less under the 
influence of terror. The historical myths we must leave the 
masters of history to follow ; they, and the events they 
record, being yet involved in great, though attractive and 
penetrable, mystery. But the stars, and hills, and storms 
are with us now, as they were with others of old ; and it 
only needs that we look at them with the earnestness of 
those childish eyes to understand the first words spoken of 
them by the children of men. And then, in all the most 
beautiful and enduring myths, we shall find, not only a 
literal story of a real person, — not only a parallel imagery 
of moral principle, — but an underlying worship of natural 
phenomena, out of which both have sprung, and in which 
both forever remain rooted. Thus, from the real sun, 
rising and setting ; — from the real atmosphere, calm in its 
dominion of unfading blue, and fierce in its descent of 
tempest, — the Greek forms first the idea of two entirely 
personal and corporeal gods, whose limbs are clothed in 
divine flesh, and whose brows are crowned with divine 
beauty ; yet so real that the quiver rattles at their shoulder, 



288 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

and the chariot bends beneath their weight. And, on the 
other hand, collaterally with these corporeal images, and 
never for one instant separated from them, he conceives 
also two omnipresent spiritual influences, of which one 
illuminates, as the sun, with a constant fire, whatever in 
humanity is skillful and wise ; and the other, like the living 
air, breathes the calm of heavenly fortitude, and strength of 
righteous anger, into every human breast that is pure and 
brave. 

6. Now, therefore, in nearly every myth of importance, 
and certainly in every one of those of which I shall speak 
to-night, you have to discern these three structural parts — 
the root and the two branches : — the root, in physical ex- 
istence, sun, or sky, or cloud, or sea ; then the personal in- 
carnation of that ; becoming a trusted and companionable 
deity, with whom you may walk hand in hand, as a child 
with its brother or its sister ; and, lastly, the moral signifi- 
cance of the image, which is in all the great myths eter- 
nally and beneficently true. 

7. The great myths ; that is to say, myths made by great 
people. For the first plain fact about myth-making is one 
which has been most strangely lost sight of, — that you 
cannot make a myth unless you have something to make 
it of. You cannot tell a secret which you don't know. If 
the myth is about the sky, it must have been made by 
somebody who had looked at the sky. If the myth is about 
justice and fortitude, it must have been made by some one 
who knew what it was to be just or patient. According to 
the quantity of understanding in the person, will be the 
quantity of significance in his fable ; and the myth of a 
simple and ignorant race must necessarily mean little, be- 
cause a simple and ignorant race have little to mean. So 
the great question in reading a story is always, not what 
wild hunter dreamed, or what childish race first dreaded 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 289 

it ; but what wise man first perfectly told, and what strong 
people first perfectly lived by it. And the real meaning 
of any myth is that which it has at the noblest age of the 
nation among whom it is current. The farther back you 
pierce, the less significance you will find, until you come to 
the first narrow thought, which, indeed, contains the germ of 
the accomplished tradition; but only as the seed contains the 
flower. As the intelligence and passion of the race develop, 
they cling to and nourish their beloved and sacred legend ; 
leaf by leaf it expands under the touch of more pure 
affections, and more delicate imagination, until at last the 
perfect fable bourgeons out into symmetry of milky stem and 
honeyed bell. 

8. But through whatever changes it may pass, remember 
that our right reading of it is wholly dependent on the 
materials we have in our own minds for an intelligent 
answering sympathy. If it first arose among a people who 
dwelt under stainless skies, and measured their journeys by 
ascending and declining stars, we certainly cannot read their 
story, if we have never seen anything above us in the day, 
but smoke ; nor anything round us in the night but candles. 
If the tale goes on to change clouds or planets into living 
creatures, — to invest them with fair forms, — and inflame 
them with mighty passions, we can only understand the 
story of the human-hearted things, in so far as we ourselves 
take pleasure in the perfectness of visible form, or can 
sympathize, by an effort of imagination, with the strange 
people who had other loves than that of wealth, and other 
interests than those of commerce. And, lastly, if the myth 
complete itself to the fulfilled thoughts of the nation, by 
attributing to the gods, whom they have carved out of their 
fantasy, continual presence with their own souls ; and their 
every effort for good is finally guided by the sense of the 
companionship, the praise, and the pure will of Immortals, 



29O THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

we shall be able to follow them into this last circle of their 
faith only in the degree in which the better parts of our own 
beings have been also stirred by the aspects of nature, or 
strengthened by her laws. It may be easy to prove that the 
ascent of Apollo in his chariot signifies nothing but the 
rising of the sun. But what does the sunrise itself signify 
to us ? If only languid return to frivolous amusement, or 
fruitless labor, it will, indeed, not be easy for us to conceive 
the power, over a Greek, of the name of Apollo. But if, for 
us also, as for the Greek, the sunrise means daily restoration 
to the sense of passionate gladness and of perfect life — if 
it means the thrilling of new strength through every nerve, 
— the shedding over us of a better peace than the peace of 
night, in the power of the dawn,- — and the purging of evil 
vision and fear by the baptism of its dew ; — if the sun 
itself is an influence to us also, of spiritual good, — and 
becomes thus in reality, not in imagination, to us also, a 
spiritual power, — we may then soon over-pass the narrow 
limit of conception which kept that power impersonal, and 
rise with the Greek to the thought of an angel who rejoiced 
as a strong man to run his course, whose voice, calling to 
life and to labor, rang round the earth, and whose going 
forth was to the ends of heaven. 

9. The time, then, at which I shall take up for you, as 
well as I can decipher it, the tradition of the Gods of 
Greece, shall be near the beginning of its central and formed 
faith, — about 500 B.C., — a faith of which the character is 
perfectly represented by Pindar and Aeschylus, who are 
both of them outspokenly religious, and entirely sincere 
men ; while we may always look back to find the less 
developed thought of the preceding epoch given by Homer, 
in a more occult, subtle, half-instinctive, and involuntary way. 

10. Now, at that culminating period of the Greek religion, 
we find, under one governing Lord of all things, four subor- 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 29I 

dinate elemental forces, and four spiritual powers living in 
them, and commanding them. The elements are of course 
the well-known four of the ancient world — the earth, the 
waters, the fire, and the air ; and the living powers of them 
are Demeter, the Latin Ceres ; Poseidon, the Latin Neptune ; 
Apollo, who has retained always his Greek name ; and 
Athena, the Latin Minerva. Each of these is descended 
from, or changed from, more ancient, and therefore more 
mystic deities of the earth and heaven, and of a finer 
element of ether supposed to be beyond the heavens ; 1 but 
at this time we find the four quite definite, both in their 
kingdoms and in their personalities. They are the rulers of 
the earth that we tread upon, and the air that we breathe ; 
and are with us as closely, in their vivid humanity, as the 
dust that they animate, and the winds that they bridle. I 
shall briefly define for you the range of their separate 
dominions, and then follow, as far as we have time, the 
most interesting of the legends which relate to the queen of 
the air. 

11. The rule of the first spirit, Demeter, the earth 
mother, is over the earth, first, as the origin of all life — the 
dust from whence we were taken : secondly, as the receiver 
of all things back at last into silence — "Dust thou art, and 
unto dust shalt thou return." And, therefore, as the most 
tender image of this appearing and fading life, in the birth 
and fall of flowers, her daughter Proserpine plays in the 
fields of Sicily, and thence is torn away into darkness, and 
becomes the Queen of Fate — not merely of death, but of 
the gloom which closes over and ends, not beauty only, but 
sin ; and chiefly of sins the sin against the life she gave : 
so that she is, in her highest power, Persephone, the 
avenger and purifier of blood, — "The voice of thy brother's 

1 And by modern science now also asserted, and with probability 
argued to exist. 



292 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

blood cries to me out of the ground." Then, side by side 
with this queen of the earth, we find a demigod of agricul- 
ture by the plough — the lord of grain, or of the thing 
ground by the mill. And it is a singular proof of the 
simplicity of Greek character at this noble time, that of all 
representations left to us of their deities by their art, few are 
so frequent, and none perhaps so beautiful, as the symbol of 
this spirit of agriculture. 

12. Then the dominant spirit of the element of water is 
Neptune, but subordinate to him are myriads of other water 
spirits, of whom Nereus is the chief, with Palaemon, and 
Leucothea, the " white lady " of the sea, and Thetis, and 
nymphs innumerable, who, like her, could " suffer a sea 
change," while the river deities had each independent power, 
according to the preciousness of their streams to the cities 
fed by them, — the "fountain Arethuse, and thou, honored 
flood, smooth sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds." 
And, spiritually, this king of the waters is lord of the 
strength and daily flow of human life — he gives it material 
force and victory ; which is the meaning of the dedication 
of the hair, as the sign of the strength of life, to the river of 
the native land. 

13. Demeter, then, over the earth, and its giving and 
receiving of life. Neptune over the waters, and the flow 
and force of life, — always among the Greeks typified by the 
horse, which was to them as a crested sea-wave, animated 
and bridled. Then the third element, fire, has set over it 
two powers : over earthly fire, the assistant of human labor, 
is set Hephaestus, lord of all labor in which is the flush and 
the sweat of the brow ; and over heavenly fire, the source of 
day, is set Apollo, the spirit of all kindling, purifying, and 
illuminating intellectual wisdom, each of these gods having 
also their subordinate or associated powers — servant, or 
sister, or companion muse. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 293 

14. Then, lastly, we come to the myth which is to be our 
subject of closer inquiry — the story of Athena and of the 
deities subordinate to her. This great goddess, the Neith 
of the Egyptians, the Athena or Athenaia of the Greeks, and, 
with broken power, half usurped by Mars, the Minerva of 
the Latins, is, physically, the queen of the air ; having 
supreme power both over its blessing of calm and wrath of 
storm ; and, spiritually, she is the queen of the breath of 
man, first of the bodily breathing which is life to his blood 
and strength to his arm in battle ; and then of the mental 
breathing, or inspiration, which is his moral health and 
habitual wisdom ; wisdom of conduct and of the heart, as 
opposed to the wisdom of imagination and the brain ; moral, 
as distinct from intellectual ; inspired, as distinct from 
illuminated. 

15. By a singular, and fortunate, though I believe wholly 
accidental coincidence, the heart-virtue, of which she is the 
spirit, was separated by the ancients into four divisions, 
which have since obtained acceptance from all men as 
rightly discerned, and have received, as if from the quarters 
of the four winds of which Athena is the natural queen, the 
name of " Cardinal " virtues : namely, Prudence (the right 
seeing, and foreseeing, of events through darkness) ; Justice 
(the righteous bestowal of favor and of indignation) ; 
Fortitude (patience under trial by pain) ; and Temperance 
(patience under trial by pleasure). With respect to these 
four virtues, the attributes of Athena are all distinct. In 
her prudence, or sight in darkness, she is " Glaukopis," 
" owl-eyed." 1 In her justice, which is the dominant virtue, 
she wears two robes, one of light and one of darkness ; the 
robe of light, saffron color, or the color of the daybreak, 
falls to her feet, covering her wholly with favor and love, — 

1 There are many other meanings in the epithet ; see, farther on, 
§9i- 



294 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the calm of the sky in blessing ; it is embroidered along its 
edge with her victory over the giants (the troublous powers 
of the earth), and the likeness of it was woven yearly by the 
Athenian maidens and carried to the temple of their own 
Athena, — not to the Parthenon, that was the temple of all 
the world's Athena, — but this they carried to the temple of 
their own only one, who loved them, and stayed with them 
always. Then her robe of indignation is worn on her breast 
and left arm only, fringed with fatal serpents, and fastened 
with Gorgonian cold, turning men to stone ; physically, the 
lightning and the hail of chastisement by storm. Then in 
her fortitude she wears the crested and unstooping helmet ; 1 
and lastly, in her temperance, she is the queen of maiden- 
hood — stainless as the air of heaven. 

1 6. But all these virtues mass themselves in the Greek 
mind into the two main ones — of Justice, or noble passion, 
and Fortitude, or noble patience ; and of these, the chief 
powers of Athena, the Greeks had divinely written for them, 
and all men after them, two mighty songs, — one, of the 
Menis, 2 mens, passion, or zeal, of Athena, breathed into a 
mortal whose name is " Ache of heart," and whose short life 
is only the incarnate brooding and burst of storm ; and the 
other is of the foresight and fortitude of Athena, maintained 
by her in the heart of a mortal whose name is given to him 
from a longer grief, Odysseus, the " full of sorrow, the much- 
enduring, and the long-suffering." 

17. The minor expressions by the Greeks in word, in 
symbol, and in religious service, of this faith, are so many 

1 I am compelled, for clearness' sake, to mark only one meaning at a 
time. Athena's helmet is sometimes a mask — sometimes a sign of 
anger — sometimes of the highest light of ether ; but I cannot speak of 
all this at once. 

2 This word of the Iliad, Menis, afterwards passes into the Latin 
Mens ; is the root of the Latin name for Athena, " Minerva," and so of 
the English " mind." 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 295 

and so beautiful, that I hope some day to gather at least a 
few of them into a separate body of evidence respecting the 
power of Athena and its relations to the ethical conception 
of the Homeric poems, or, rather, to their ethical nature ; 
for they are not conceived didactically, but are didactic in 
their essence, as all good art is. There is an increasing 
insensibility to this character, and even an open denial of it 
among us now, which is one of the most curious errors of 
modernism, — the peculiar and judicial blindness of an age 
which, having long practiced art and poetry for the sake 
of pleasure only, has become incapable of reading their 
language when they were both didactic : and also, having 
been itself accustomed to a professedly didactic teaching, 
which yet, for private interests, studiously avoids collision 
with every prevalent vice of its day (and especially with 
avarice), has become equally dead to the intensely ethical 
conceptions of a race which habitually divided all men into 
two broad classes of worthy or worthless ; — good, and good 
for nothing. And even the celebrated passage of Horace 
about the " Iliad " is now misread or disbelieved, as if it was 
impossible that the " Iliad " could be instructive because it is 
not like a sermon. Horace does not say that it is like a 
sermon, and would have been still less likely to say so, if he 
ever had had the advantage of hearing a sermon. " I have 
been reading that story of Troy again " (thus he writes to a 
noble youth of Rome whom he cared for), " quietly at 
Praeneste, while you have been busy at Rome ; and truly I 
think that what is base and what is noble, and what useful 
and useless, may be better learned from that than from all 
Chrysippus' and Crantor's talk put together." 1 Which is 
profoundly true, not of the "Iliad" only, but of all other great 

1 Note, once for all, that unless when there is question about some 
particular expression, I never translate literally, but give the real force 
of what is said, as I best can. freely 



296 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

art whatsoever ; for all pieces of such art are didactic in the 
purest way, indirectly and occultly, so that, first, you shall 
only be bettered by them if you are already hard at work in 
bettering yourself ; and when you are bettered by them, it 
shall be partly with a general acceptance of their influence, 
so constant and subtle that you shall be no more conscious 
of it than of the healthy digestion of food ; and partly by a 
gift of unexpected truth, which you shall only find by slow 
mining for it ; — which is withheld on purpose, and close- 
locked, that you may not get it till you have forged the key 
of it in a furnace of your own heating. And this withholding 
of their meaning is continual, and confessed, in the great 
poets. Thus Pindar says of himself : " There is many an 
arrow in my quiver, full of speech to the wise, but, for the 
many, they need interpreters." And neither Pindar nor 
Aeschylus, nor Hesiod, nor Homer, nor any of the greater 
poets or teachers of any nation or time, ever spoke but with 
intentional reservation ; nay, beyond this, there is often a 
meaning which they themselves cannot interpret, — which it 
may be for ages long after them to interpret, — in what they 
said, so far as it recorded true imaginative vision. For all 
the greatest myths have been seen, by the men who tell 
them, involuntarily and passively, — seen by them with as 
great distinctness (and in some respects, though not in all, 
under conditions as far beyond the control of their will) as 
a dream sent to any of vis by night when we dream clearest ; 
and it is this veracity of vision that could not be refused, 
and of moral that could not be foreseen, which in modern 
historical inquiry has been left wholly out of account : 
being indeed the thing which no merely historical investiga- 
tor can understand, or even believe; for it belongs exclusively 
to the creative or artistic group of men, and can only be 
interpreted by those of their race, who themselves, in some 
measure also, see visions and dream dreams. 



ATHENA IX THE HEAVENS. 297 

So that you may obtain a more truthful idea of the nature 
of Greek religion and legend from the poems of Keats, and 
the nearly as beautiful, and, in general grasp of subject, far 
more powerful, recent work of Morris, than from frigid 
scholarship, however extensive. Not that the poet's im- 
pressions or renderings of things are wholly true, but their 
truth is vital, not formal. They are like sketches from the 
life by Reynolds or Gainsborough, which may be demons- 
trably inaccurate or imaginary in many traits, and indistinct 
in others, yet will be in the deepest sense like, and true ; 
while the work of historical analysis is too often weak with 
loss, through the very labor of its miniature touches, or 
useless in clumsy or vapid veracity of externals, and com- 
placent security of having' done all that is required for the 
portrait, when it has measured the breadth of the forehead, 
and the length of the nose. 

18. The first of requirements, then, for the right reading 
of myths, is the understanding of the nature of all true 
vision by noble persons ; namely, that it is founded on 
constant laws common to all human nature ; that it perceives, 
however darkly, things which are for all ages true ; — that 
we can only understand it so far as we have some perception 
of the same truth ; — and that its fullness is developed and 
manifested more and more by the reverberation of it from 
minds of the same mirror-temper, in succeeding ages. You 
will understand Homer better by seeing his reflection in 
Dante, as you may trace new forms and softer colors in a 
hill-side, redoubled by a lake. 

I shall be able partly to show you, even to-night, how 
much, in the Homeric vision of Athena, has been made 
clearer by the advance of time, being thus essentially and 
eternally true ; but I must, in the outset, indicate the relation 
to that central thought of the imagery of the inferior deities 
of storm. 



2gb THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

19. And first I will take the myth of Aeolus (the "sage 
Hippotades " of Milton), as it is delivered pure by Homer 
from the early times. 

Why do you suppose Milton calls him " sage " ? One 
does not usually think of the winds as very thoughtful or 
deliberate powers. But hear Homer : " Then we came to 
the Aeolian island, and there dwelt Aeolus Hippotades, dear 
to the deathless gods : there he dwelt in a floating island, 
and round it was a wall of brass that could not be broken ; 
and the smooth rock of it ran up sheer. To whom twelve 
children were born in the sacred chambers — six daughters 
and six strong sons ; and they dwell forever with their 
beloved father, and their mother strict in duty ; and with 
them are laid up a thousand benefits ; and the misty house 
around them rings with fluting all the day long." Now, 
you are to note first, in this description, the wall of brass 
and the sheer rock. You will find, throughout the fables 
of the tempest-group, that the brazen wall and precipice 
(occurring in another myth as the brazen tower of Danae) 
are always connected with the idea of the towering cloud 
lighted by the sun, here truly described as a floating island. 
Secondly, you hear that all treasures were laid up in them ; 
therefore, you know this Aeolus is lord of the beneficent 
winds (" he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries ") ; and 
presently, afterwards Homer calls him the " steward " of the 
winds, the master of the storehouse of them. And this idea 
of gifts and preciousness in the winds of heaven is carried 
out in the well-known sequel of the fable: — Aeolus gives 
them to Ulysses, all but one, bound in leathern bags, with a 
glittering cord of silver ; and so like bags of treasure that 
the sailors think they are so, and open them to see. And 
when Ulysses is thus driven back to Aeolus, and prays him 
again to help him, note the deliberate words of the King's 
refusal, — "Did I not," he says, "send thee on thy way 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 2QQ 

heartily, that thou mightcst reach thy country, thy home, 
and whatever is dear to thee? It is not lawful for me again 
to send forth favorably on his journey a man hated by the 
happy gods." This idea of the beneficence of Aeolus 
remains to the latest times, though Virgil, by adopting 
the vulgar change of the cloud island into Lipari, has 
lost it a little ; but even when it is finally explained away 
by Diodorus, Aeolus is still a kind-hearted monarch, who 
lived on the coast of Sorrento, invented the use of sails, 
and established a system of storm signals. 

20. Another beneficent storm-power, Boreas, occupies an 
important place in early legend, and a singularly principal 
one in art ; and I wish I could read to you a passage of 
Plato about the legend of Boreas and Oreithyia, 1 and the 
breeze and shade of the Ilissus — notwithstanding its severe 
reflection upon persons who waste their time on mytholog- 
ical studies : but I must go on at once to the fable with 
which you are all generally familiar, that of the Harpies. 

This is always connected with that of Boreas or the north 
wind, because the two sons of Boreas are enemies of the 
Harpies, and drive them away into frantic flight. The myth 
in its first literal form means only the battle between the 
fair north wind and the foul south one : the two Harpies, 
"Stormswift" and " Swiftfoot," are the sisters of the rain- 
bow — that is to say, they are the broken drifts of the 
showery south wind, and the clear north wind drives them 
back ; but they quickly take a deeper and more malignant 
significance. You know the short, violent, spiral gusts that 
lift the dust before coming rain : the Harpies get identified 
first with these, and then with more violent whirlwinds, and 
so they are called " Harpies," " the Snatchers," and are 
thought of as entirely destructive ; their manner of destroy- 

1 Translated by Max Miiller in the opening of his essay on " Com- 
parative Mythology." (Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. IT.) 



300 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

ing being twofold — by snatching away, and by defiling and 
polluting. This is a month in which you may really see 
a small Harpy at her work almost whenever you choose. 
The first time that there is threatening of rain after two 
or three days of fine weather, leave your window well open 
to the street, and some books or papers on the table ; and if 
you do not, in a little while, know what the Harpies mean, 
and how they snatch, and how they defile, I'll give up my 
Greek myths. 

21. That is the physical meaning. It is now easy to find 
the mental one. You must all have felt the expression of 
ignoble anger in those fitful gusts of sudden storm. There 
is a sense of provocation and apparent bitterness of purpose 
in their thin and senseless fury, wholly different from the 
noble anger of the greater tempests. Also, they seem use- 
less and unnatural, and the Greek thinks of them always as 
vile in malice, and opposed, therefore, to the sons of Boreas, 
who are kindly winds, that fill sails, and wave harvests, — 
full of bracing health and happy impulses. From this lower 
and merely malicious temper, the Harpies rise into a greater 
terror, always associated with their whirling motion, which 
is indeed indicative of the most destructive winds : and 
they are thus related to the nobler tempests, as Charybdis 
to the sea ; they are devouring and desolating, merciless, 
making all things disappear that come in their grasp : and 
so, spiritually, they are the gusts of vexatious, fretful, law- 
less passion, vain and overshadowing, discontented and 
lamenting, meager and insane, — spirits of wasted energy, 
and wandering disease, and unappeased famine, and unsat- 
isfied hope. So you have, on the one side, the winds of 
prosperity and health, on the other, of ruin and sickness. 
Understand that, once, deeply — any who have ever known 
the weariness of vain desires ; the pitiful, unconquerable, 
coilins: and recoiling and self-involved returns of some 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 30 1 

sickening famine and thirst of heart : — and you will know 
what was in the sound of the Harpy Celaeno's shriek from 
her rock ; and why, in the seventh circle of the " Inferno," 
the Harpies make their nests in the warped branches of the 
trees that are the souls of suicides. 

22. Now you must always be prepared to read Greek 
legends as you trace threads through figures on a silken 
damask : the same thread runs through the web, but it 
makes part of different figures. Joined with other colors, 
you hardly recognize it, and in different lights, it is dark or 
light. Thus the Greek fables blend and cross curiously in 
different directions, till they knit themselves into an ara- 
besque where sometimes you cannot tell black from purple, 
nor blue from emerald — they being all the truer for this, 
because the truths of emotion they represent are interwoven 
in the same way, but all the more difficult to read, and to 
explain in any order. Thus the Harpies, as they represent 
vain desire, are connected with the Sirens, who are the 
spirits of constant desire : so that it is difficult sometimes in 
early art to know which are meant, both being represented 
alike as birds with women's heads ; only the Sirens are the 
great constant desires — the infinite sicknesses of heart — 
which, rightly placed, give life, and wrongly placed, waste it 
away ; so that there are two groups of Sirens, one noble and 
saving, as the other is fatal. But there are no animating or 
saving Harpies ; their nature is always vexing and full of 
weariness, and thus they are curiously connected with the 
whole group of legends about Tantalus. 

23. We all know what it is to be tantalized ; but we do 
not often think of asking what Tantalus was tantalized 
for — what he had done, to be forever kept hungry in sight 
of food? Well ; he had not been condemned to this merely 
for being a glutton. By Dante the same punishment is 
assigned to simple gluttony, to purge it away; — but the sins 



302 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

of Tantalus were of a much wider and more mysterious 
kind. There are four great sins attributed to him : one, 
stealing the food of the Gods to give it to men ; another, 
sacrificing his son to feed the Gods themselves (it may 
remind you for a moment of what I was telling you of the 
earthly character of Demeter, that, while the other Gods all 
refuse, she, dreaming about her lost daughter, eats part of 
the shoulder of Pelops before she knows what she is doing) ; 
another sin is, telling the secrets of the Gods ; and only the 
fourth — stealing the golden dog of Pandareos — is con- 
nected with gluttony. The special sense of this myth is 
marked by Pandareos receiving the happy privilege of 
never being troubled with indigestion ; the dog, in general, 
however, mythically represents all utterly senseless and 
carnal desires ; mainly that of gluttony ; and in the mythic 
sense of Hades — that is to say, so far as it represents 
spiritual ruin in this life, and not a literal hell- — the dog 
Cerberus is its gate-keeper — with this special marking of 
his character of sensual passion, that he fawns on all those 
who descend, but rages against all who would return (the 
Virgilian "facilis descensus" being a later recognition of 
this mythic character of Plades) : the last labor of Hercules 
is the dragging him up to the light ; and in some sort, he 
represents the voracity or devouring of Hades itself ; and 
the mediaeval representation of the mouth of hell perpetu- 
ates the same thought. Then, also, the power of evil passion 
is partly associated with the red and scorching light of 
Sirius, as opposed to the pure light of the sun : — he is the 
dog-star of ruin ; and hence the continual Homeric dwelling 
upon him, and comparison of the flame of anger to his 
swarthy light ; only, in his scorching, it is thirst, not hunger, 
over which he rules physically ; so that the fable of Icarius, 
his first master, corresponds, among the Greeks, to the 
legend of the drunkenness of Noah. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 303 

The story of Actaeon, the raging death of Hecuba, and 
the tradition of the white dog which ate part of Hercules' 
first sacrifice, and so gave name to the Cynosarges, are all 
various phases of the same thought — the Greek notion of 
the dog being throughout confused between its serviceable 
fidelity, its watchfulness, its foul voracity, shamelessness, 
and deadly madness, while, with the curious reversal or 
recoil of the meaning which attaches itself to nearly every 
great myth — and which we shall presently see notably 
exemplified in the relations of the serpent to Athena, — 
the dog becomes in philosophy a type of severity and 
abstinence. 

24. It would carry us too far aside were I to tell you the 
story of Pandareos' dog — or rather, of Jupiter's dog, for 
Pandareos was its guardian only ; all that bears on our 
present purpose is that the guardian of this golden dog had 
three daughters, one of whom was subject to the power of 
the Sirens, and is turned into the nightingale ; and the other 
two were subject to the power of the Harpies, and this was 
what happened to them. They were very beautiful, and 
they were beloved by the gods in their youth, and all the 
great goddesses were anxious to bring them up rightly. Of 
all types of young ladies' education, there is nothing so 
splendid as that of the younger daughters of Pandareos. 
They have literally the four greatest goddesses for their 
governesses. Athena teaches them domestic accomplish- 
ments ; how to weave, and sew, and the like ; Artemis 
teaches them to hold themselves up straight ; Hera, how to 
behave proudly and oppressively to company ; and Aphro- 
dite — delightful governess — feeds them with cakes and 
honey all day long. All goes well, until just the time when 
they are going to be brought out ; then there is a great dis- 
pute whom they are to marry, and, in the midst of it, they are 
carried off by the Harpies, given by them to be slaves to the 



304 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Furies, and never seen more. But of course there is nothing 
in Greek myths ; and one never heard of such things as vain 
desires, and empty hopes, and clouded passions, defiling and 
snatching away the souls of maidens, in a London season. 

I have no time to trace for you any more harpy legends, 
though they are full of the most curious interest ; but I may 
confirm for you my interpretation of this one, and prove its 
importance in the Greek mind, by noting that Polygnotus 
painted these maidens, in his great religious series of paint- 
ings at Delphi, crowned with flowers, and playing at dice; 
and that Penelope remembers them in her last fit of despair, 
just before the return of Ulysses, and prays bitterly that she 
may be snatched away at once into nothingness by the 
Harpies, like Pandareos' daughters, rather than be tormented 
longer by her deferred hope, and anguish of disappointed love. 

25. I have hitherto spoken only of deities of the winds. 
We pass now to a far more important group, the Deities of 
Cloud. Both of these are subordinate to the ruling power 
of the air, as the demigods of the fountains and minor seas 
are to the great deep : but, as the cloud-firmament detaches 
itself more from the air, and has a wider range of ministry 
than the minor streams and seas, the highest cloud deity, 
Hermes, has a rank more equal with Athena than Nereus 
or Proteus with Neptune ; and there is greater difficulty in 
tracing his character, because his physical dominion over 
the clouds can, of course, be asserted only where clouds 
are ; and, therefore, scarcely at all in Egypt : 1 so that the 

1 I believe that the conclusions of recent scholarship are generally 
opposed to the Herodotean ideas of any direct acceptance by the Greeks 
of Egyptian myths : and very certainly, Greek art is developed by 
giving the veracity and simplicity of real life to Eastern savage gro- 
tesque ; and not by softening the severity of pure Egyptian design. 
But it is of no consequence whether one conception was, or was not, in 
this case, derived from the other; my object is only to mark the essen- 
tial differences between them. 



ATHENA IN 1'lllC HEAVENS. 305 

changes which Hermes undergoes in becoming a Greek 
from an Egyptian and Phoenician god, are greater than in 
any other case of adopted tradition. In Egypt, Hermes is a 
deity of historical record, and a conductor of the dead to 
judgment; the Greeks take away much of this historical 
function, assigning it to the Muses ; but, in investing him 
with the physical power over clouds, they give him that 
which the Muses disdain, the power of concealment, and 
of theft. The snatching away by the Harpies is with brute 
force ; but the snatching away by the clouds is connected 
with the thought of hiding, and of making things seem to 
be what they are not ; so that Hermes is the god of lying, 
as he is of mist ; and yet with this ignoble function of mak- 
ing things vanish and disappear, is connected the remnant 
of his grand Egyptian authority of leading away souls in 
the cloud of death (the actual dimness of sight caused 
by mortal wounds physically suggesting the darkness and 
descent of clouds, and continually being so described in 
the "Iliad") ; while the sense of the need of guidance on 
the untrodden road follows necessarily. You cannot but 
remember how this thought of cloud guidance, and cloud 
receiving of souls at death, has been elsewhere ratified. 

26. Without following that higher clue, I will pass to the 
lovely group of myths connected with the birth of Hermes 
on the Greek mountains. You know that the valley of 
Sparta is one of the noblest mountain ravines in the world, 
and that the western flank of it is formed by an unbroken 
chain of crags, forty miles long, rising, opposite Sparta, to a 
height of 8,000 feet, and known as the chain of Taygetus. 
Now, the nymph from whom that mountain ridge is named, 
was the mother of Lacedaemon ; therefore, the mythic ances- 
tress of the Spartan race. She is the nymph Taygeta, and 
one of the seven stars of spring ; one of those Pleiades of 
whom is the question to Job, — " Ganst thou bind the sweet 



306 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion ?" "The 
sweet influences of Pleiades," of the stars of spring, — no- 
where sweeter than among the pine-clad slopes of the hills 
of Sparta and Arcadia, when the snows of their higher 
summits, beneath the sunshine of April, fell into fountains, 
and rose into clouds ; and in every ravine was a newly- 
awakened voice of waters, — soft increase of whisper among 
its sacred stones : and on every crag its forming and fading 
veil of radiant cloud ; temple above temple, of the divine 
marble that no tool can pollute, nor ruin undermine. And, 
therefore, beyond this central valley, this great Greek vase 
of Arcadia, on the "hollow" mountain, Cyllene, or "preg- 
nant" mountain, called also "cold," because there the 
vapors rest, 1 and born of the eldest of those stars of spring, 
that Maia, from whom your own month of May has its 
name, bringing to you, in the green of her garlands, and 
the white of her hawthorn, the unrecognized symbols of the 
pastures and the wreathed snows of Arcadia, where long 
ago she was queen of stars : there, first cradled and wrapt 
in swaddling-clothes ; then raised, in a moment of surprise, 
into his wandering power, — is born the shepherd of the 
clouds, winged-footed and deceiving, — blinding the eyes 
of Argus, — escaping from the grasp of Apollo, — restless 
messenger between the highest sky and topmost earth,- — 
"the herald Mercury, new lighted on a heaven-kissing hill." 
27. Now, it will be wholly impossible, at present, to trace 
for you any of the minor Greek expressions of this thought, 
except only that Mercury, as the cloud shepherd, is especially 
called Eriophoros, the wool-bearer. You will recollect the 
name from the common woolly rush " eriophorum " which 
has a cloud of silky seed ; and note also that he wears dis- 

1 On the altar of Hermes on its summit, as on that of the Lacinian 
Hera, no wind ever stirred the ashes. By those altars, the Gods of 
Heaven were appeased ; and all their storms at rest. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 307 

tinctively the flat cap, pctasos, named from a word meaning 
to expand ; which shaded from the sun, and is worn on 
journeys. You have the epithet of mountains "cloud- 
capped" as an established form with every poet, and the 
Mont Pilate of Lucerne is named from a Latin word signi- 
fying specially a woolen cap ; but Mercury has, besides, a 
general Homeric epithet, curiously and intensely concen- 
trated in meaning, "the profitable or serviceable by wool," 
that is to say, by shepherd wealth; hence, "pecuniarily," 
rich, or serviceable, and so he passes at last into a general 
mercantile deity ; while yet the cloud sense of the wool is 
retained by Homer always, so that he gives him this epithet 
when it would otherwise have been quite meaningless (in 
" Iliad," xxiv. 440), when he drives Priam's chariot, and 
breathes force into his horses, precisely as we shall find 
Athena drive Diomed : and yet the serviceable and profit- 
able sense,- — and something also of gentle and soothing 
character in the mere wool-softness, as used for dress, and 
religious rites, — is retained also in the epithet, and thus 
the gentle and serviceable Hermes is opposed to the deceit- 
ful one. 

28. In connection with this driving of Priam's chariot, 
remember that as Autolycus is the son of Hermes the 
Deceiver, Myrtilus (the Auriga of the Stars) is the son of 
Hermes the Guide. The name Hermes itself means Im- 
pulse ; and he is especially the shepherd of the flocks of 
the sky, in driving, or guiding, or stealing them ; and yet 
his great name, Argeiphontes, not only — as in different 
passages of the olden poets— means "Shining White," 
which is said of him as being himself the silver cloud 
lighted by the sun ; but " Argus-Killer," the killer of bright- 
ness, which is said of him as he veils the sky, and especially 
the stars, which are the eyes of Argus ; or, literally, eyes of 
brightness, which Juno, who is, with Jupiter, part of the 



308 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

type of highest heaven, keeps in her peacock's train. We 
know that this interpretation is right, from a passage in 
which Euripides describes the shield of Hippomedon, which 
bore for its sign, "Argus the all-seeing, covered with eyes; 
open towards the rising of the stars and closed towards 
their setting." 

And thus Hermes becomes the spirit of the movement of 
the sky or firmament ; not merely the fast flying of the 
transitory cloud, but the great motion of the heavens and 
stars themselves. Thus, in his highest power, he corre- 
sponds to the " primo mobile" 1 of the later Italian 
philosophy, and, in his simplest, is the guide of all 
mysterious and cloudy movement, and of all successful 
subtleties. Perhaps the prettiest minor recognition of his 
character is when, on the night foray of Ulysses and 
Diomed, Ulysses wears the helmet stolen by Autolycus, the 
son of Hermes. 

29. The position in the Greek mind of Hermes as the 
Lord of cloud is, however, more mystic and ideal than that 
of any other deity, just on account of the constant and real 
presence of the cloud itself under different forms, giving 
rise to all kinds of minor fables. The play of the Greek 
imagination in this direction is so wide and complex, that I 
cannot even give you an outline of its range in my present 
limits. There is first a great series of storm-legends con- 
nected with the family of the historic Aeolus, centralized 
by the story of Athamas, with his two wives, " the Cloud " 
and the " White Goddess," ending in that of Phrixus and 
Helle, and of the golden fleece (which is only the cloud- 
burden of Hermes Eriophoros). With this, there is the 
fate of Salmoneus, and the destruction of Glaucus by his 
own horses; all these minor myths of storm concentrating 
themselves darkly into the legend of Bellerophon and the 
1 First cause. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 309 

Chimaera, in which there is an under-story about the vain 
subduing of passion and treachery, and the end of life in 
fading melancholy, — ■ which, I hope, not many of you could 
understand even were I to show it you (the merely physical 
meaning of the Chimaera is the cloud of volcanic lightning, 
connected wholly with earthfire, but resembling the heavenly 
cloud in its height and its thunder). Finally, in the Aeolic 
group, there is the legend of Sisyphus, which I mean to 
work out thoroughly by itself : its root is in the position of 
Corinth as ruling the isthmus and the two seas — the 
Corinthian Acropolis, two thousand feet high, being the 
center of the crossing currents of the winds, and of the 
commerce of Greece. Therefore, Athena, and the fountain 
cloud Pegasus, are more closely connected with Corinth 
than even with Athens in their material, though not in their 
moral power ; and Sisyphus founds the Isthmian games in 
connection with a melancholy story about the sea gods ; 
but he himself is KepSia-Tos avhpuv, the most "gaining" and 
subtle of men ; who, having the key of the Isthmus, 
becomes the type of transit, transfer, or trade, as such ; and 
of the apparent gain from it, which is not gain : and this is 
the real meaning of his punishment in hell — eternal toil 
and recoil (the modern idol of capital being, indeed, the 
stone of Sisyphus with a vengeance, crushing in its recoil). 
But, throughout, the old ideas of the cloud power and cloud 
feebleness, • — the deceit of its hiding, — and the emptiness 
of its vanishing, - — the Autolycus enchantment of making 
black seem white, — and the disappointed fury of Ixion 
(taking shadow for power), mingle in the moral meaning of 
this and its collateral legends ; and give an aspect, at last, 
not only of foolish cunning, but of impiety or literal 
"idolatry," "imagination worship," to the dreams of ava- 
rice and injustice, until this notion of atheism and inso- 
lent blindness becomes principal ; and the " Clouds " of 



3IO THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Aristophanes, with the personified "just" and "unjust" 
saying in the latter part of the play, foreshadow, almost 
feature by feature, in all that they were written to mock and 
to chastise, the worst elements of the impious "Stvos" 1 and 
tumult in men's thoughts, which have followed on their 
avarice in the present day, making them alike forsake the 
laws of their ancient gods, and misapprehend or reject the 
true words of their existing teachers. 

30. All this we have from the legends of the historic 
Aeolus only ; but, besides these, there is the beautiful story 
of Semele, the Mother of Bacchus. She is the cloud with 
the strength of the vine in its bosom, consumed by the 
light which matures the fruit ; the melting away of the 
cloud into the clear air at the fringe of its edges being 
exquisitely rendered by Pindar's epithet for her, Semele, 
" with the stretched-out hair " (ravvWeipa). Then there is 
the entire tradition of the Danaides, and of the tower of 
Danae and golden shower ; the birth of Perseus connecting 
this legend with that of the Gorgons and Graiae, who are 
the true clouds of thunderous and ruinous tempest. I must, 
in passing, mark for you that the form of the sword or 
sickle of Perseus, with which he kills Medusa, is another 
image of the whirling harpy vortex, and belongs especially 
to the sword of destruction or annihilation ; whence it is given 
to the two angels who gather for destruction the evil harvest 
and evil vintage of the earth (Rev. xiv. 15). I will collect 
afterwards and complete what I have already written 
respecting the Pagasean and Gorgonian legends, noting here 
only what is necessary to explain the central myth of Athena 
herself, who represents the ambient air, which included all 
cloud, and rain, and dew, and darkness, and peace, and 
wrath of heaven. Let me now try to give you, however 
briefly, some distinct idea of the several agencies of this 

great goddess : — 

1 Whirl. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 311 

31. I. She is the air giving life and health to all animals. 
II. She is the air giving vegetative power to the earth. 

III. She is the air giving motion to the sea, and ren- 

dering navigation possible. 

IV. She is the air nourishing artificial light, torch or 

lamplight ; as opposed to that of the sun, on 
one hand, and of consuming 1 fire on the other. 
•V. She is the air conveying vibration of sound. 

I will give you instances of her agency in all these 
functions. 

32. First, and chiefly, she is air as the spirit of life, 
giving vitality to the blood. Her psychic relation to the 
vital force in matter lies deeper, and we will examine it 
afterwards ; but a great number of the most interesting 
passages in Homer regard her as flying over the earth in 
local and transitory strength, simply and merely the god- 
dess of fresh air. 

It is curious that the British city which has somewhat 
saucily styled itself the Modern Athens, is indeed more 
under her especial tutelage and favor in this respect than 
perhaps any other town in the island. Athena is first 
simply what in the Modern Athens you so practically find 
her, the breeze of the mountain and the sea ; and wherever 
she comes, there is purification, and health, and power. 
The sea-beach round this isle of ours is the frieze of our 
Parthenon ; every wave that breaks on it thunders with 
Athena's voice ; nay, whenever you throw your window Avide 
open in the morning, you let in Athena, as wisdom and 
fresh air at the same instant ; and whenever you draw a 
pure, long, full breath of right heaven, you take Athena into 
your heart, through your blood ; and, with the' blood, into 
the thoughts of your brain. 

1 Not a scientific, but a very practical and expressive distinction. 



312 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Now this giving of strength by the air, observe, is 
mechanical as well as chemical. You cannot strike a 
good blow but with your chest full ; and in hand to hand 
fighting, it is not the muscle that fails first, it is the breath ; 
the longest-breathed will, on the average, be the victor, — 
not the strongest. Note how Shakespeare always leans on 
this. Of Mortimer, in " changing hardiment with great 
Glendower " : — * 

" Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink, 
Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood." 

And again, Hotspur sending challenge to Prince Harry : — 

" That none might draw short breath to-day 
But I and Harry Monmouth." 

Again, of Hamlet, before he receives his wound : — 

" He's fat, and scant of breath." 

Again, Orlando in the wrestling : — 

" Yes ; I beseech your grace 
I am not yet well breathed." 

Now of all people that ever lived, the Greeks knew best 
what breath meant, both in exercise and in battle ; and 
therefore the queen of the air becomes to them at once the 
queen of bodily strength in war ; not mere brutal muscular 
strength, — that belongs to Ares, — but the strength of young 
lives passed in pure air and swift exercise, — Camilla's vir- 
ginal force, that " flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims 
along the main." 

33. Now I will rapidly give you two or three instances 
of her direct agency in this function. First, when she 
wants to make Penelope bright and beautiful ; and to do 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 313 

away with the signs of her waiting and her grief. "Then 
Athena thought of another thing ; she laid her into deep 
sleep, and loosed all her limbs, and made her taller, and 
made her smoother, and fatter, and whiter than sawn ivory ; 
and breathed ambrosial brightness over her face ; and so 
she left her and went up to heaven." Fresh air and sound 
sleep at night, young ladies ! You see you may have 
Athena for lady's maid whenever you choose. Next, hark 
how she gives strength to Achilles when he is broken with 
fasting and grief. Jupiter pities him and says to her, — 
" ' Daughter mine, are you forsaking your own soldier, and 
don't you care for Achilles any more ? see how hungry and 
weak he is, — go and feed him with ambrosia.' So he 
urged the eager Athena ; and she leaped down out of 
heaven like a harpy falcon, shrill voiced ; and she poured 
nectar and ambrosia, full of delight, into the breast of 
Achilles, that his limbs might not fail with famine; then she 
returned to the solid dome of her strong father." And then 
comes the great passage about Achilles arming, — for which 
we have no time. But here is again Athena giving strength 
to the whole Greek army. She came as a falcon to Achilles, 
straight at him; — a sudden drift of breeze; but to the 
army she must come widely, — she sweeps round them all. 
" As when Jupiter spreads the purple rainbow over heaven, 
portending battle or cold storm, so Athena, wrapping her- 
self round with a purple cloud, stooped to the Greek 
soldiers, and raised up each of them." Note that purple, 
in Homer's use of it, nearly always means "fiery," "full of 
light." It is the light of the rainbow, not the color of it, 
which Homer means you to think of. 

34. But the most curious passage of all, and fullest of 
meaning, is when she gives strength to Menelaus, that he 
may stand unwearied against Hector. He prays to her : 
"And blue-eyed Athena was glad that he prayed to her, 



314 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

first ; and she gave him strength in his shoulders, and in 
his limbs, and she gave him the courage" — of what animal 
do you suppose ? Had it been Neptune or Mars, they 
would have given him the courage of a bull, or a lion ; but 
Athena gives him the courage of the most fearless in attack 
of all creatures — small or great — and very small it is, but 
wholly incapable of terror, — she gives him the courage 
of a fly. 

35. Now this simile of Homer's is one of the best in- 
stances I can give you of the way in which great writers 
seize truths unconsciously which are for all time. It is only 
recent science which has completely shown the perfectness 
of this minute symbol of the power of Athena ; proving that 
the insect's flight and breath are coordinated ; that its wings 
are actually forcing-pumps, of which the stroke compels the 
theoracic respiration ; and that it thus breathes and flies 
simultaneously by the action of the same muscles, so that 
respiration is carried on most vigorously during flight, 
"while the air-vessels, supplied by many pairs of lungs 
instead of one, traverse the organs of flight in far greater 
numbers than the capillary blood-vessels of our own system, 
and give enormous and untiring muscular power, a rapidity 
of action measured by thousands of strokes in the minute, 
and an endurance, by miles and hours of flight." x 

Homer could not have known this ; neither that the 
buzzing of the fly was produced as in a wind instrument, by 
a constant current of air through the trachea. But he had 
seen, and, doubtless, meant us to remember, the^ marvelous 
strength and swiftness of the insect's flight (the glance of 
the swallow itself is clumsy and slow compared to the dart- 
ing of common house-flies at play) ; he probably attributed 
its murmur to the wings, but in this also there was a type of 
what we shall presently find recognized in the name of 

1 Ormerod. Natural History of Wasps. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 315 

Pallas, — the vibratory power of the air to convey sound, — 
while, as a purifying creature, the fly holds its place beside 
the old symbol of Athena in Egypt, the vulture ; and as a 
venomous and tormenting creature, has more than the 
strength of the serpent in proportion to its size, being thus 
entirely representative of the influence of the air both in 
purification and pestilence ; and its courage is so notable 
that, strangely enough, forgetting Homer's simile, I happened 
to take the fly for an expression of the audacity of freedom 
in speaking of quite another subject. Whether it should 
be called courage, or mere mechanical instinct, may be 
questioned, but assuredly no other animal, exposed to con- 
tinual danger, is so absolutely without sign of fear. 

36. You will, perhaps, have still patience to hear two 
instances, not of the communication of strength, but of the 
personal agency of Athena as the air. When she comes 
down to help Diomed against Ares, she does not come to 
fight instead of him, but she takes his charioteer's place. 

" She snatched the reins, she lashed with all her force, 
And full on Mars impelled the foaming horse." 

Ares is the first to cast his spear ; then, note this, Pope 
says : — 

" Pallas opposed her hand, and caused to glance, 
Far from the car, the strong immortal lance." 

She does not oppose her hand in the Greek — the wind could 
not meet the lance straight — she catches it in her hand, and 
throws it off. There is no instance in which a lance is so 
parried by a mortal hand in all the " Iliad," and it is exactly 
the way the wind would parry it, catching it, and turning it 
aside. If there are any good rifleshots here — they know 
something about Athena's parrying — and in old times the 
English masters of feathered artillery knew more yet. 



3 16 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Compare also the turning of Hector's lance from Achilles. 
" Iliad " xx. 439. 

37. The last instance I will give you is as lovely as it is 
subtle. Throughout the " Iliad," Athena is herself the will or 
Menis of Achilles. If he is to be calmed, it is she who 
calms him ; if angered, it is she who inflames him. In the 
first quarrel with Atrides, when he stands at pause, with the 
great sword half drawn, " Athena came from heaven, and 
stood behind him, and caught him by the yellow hair." 
Another god would have stayed his hand upon the hilt, but 
Athena only lifts his hair. " And he turned and knew her, 
and her dreadful eyes shone upon him." There is an ex- 
quisite tenderness in this laying her hand upon his hair, for 
it is the talisman of his life, vowed to his own Thessalian 
river if he ever returned to its shore, and cast upon Patroclus' 
pile, so ordaining that there should be no return. 

38. Secondly — Athena is the air giving vegetative impulse 
to the earth. She is the wind and the rain- — and yet more 
the pure air itself, getting at the earth fresh turned by spade 
or plough- — and, above all, feeding the fresh leaves; for 
though the Greeks knew nothing about carbonic acid, they 
did know that trees fed on air. 

Now, note first in this, the myth of the air getting at 
ploughed ground. You know I told you the Lord of all 
labor by which man lived was Hephaestus ; therefore Athena 
adopts a child of his, and of the Earth, — Erichthonius, — 
literally, "the tearer up of the ground" — who is the head 
(though not in direct line,) of the kings of Attica ; and hav- 
ing adopted him, she gives him to be brought up by the three 
nymphs of the dew. Of these, Aglauros, the dweller in the 
fields, is the envy or malice of the earth ; she answers nearly 
to the envy of Cain, the tiller of the gi'ound, against his 
shepherd brother, in her own envy against her two sisters, 
Herse, the cloud dew, who is the beloved of the shepherd 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 317 

Mercury ; and Pandrosos, the diffused dew, or dew of 
heaven. Literally, you have in this myth the words of the 
blessing of Esau — "Thy dwelling shall be of the fatness of 
the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above." Aglauros 
is for her envy turned into a black stone ; and hers is one 
of the voices, — the other being that of Cain, — which haunts 
the circle of envy in the " Purgatory": — 

" Io sono Aglauro, chi divenne sasso." 

But to her two sisters, with Erichthonius, (or the hero 
Erectheus,) is built the most sacred temple of Athena in 
Athens ; the temple to their own dearest Athena — to her, 
and to the dew together ; so that it was divided into two 
parts : one, the temple of Athena of the city, and the other 
that of the dew. And this expression of her power, as the 
air bringing the dew to the hill pastures, in the central 
temple of the central city of the heathen, dominant over the 
future intellectual world, is, of all the facts connected with 
her worship as the spirit of life, perhaps the most important. 
I have no time now to trace for you the hundredth part of 
the different ways in which it bears both upon natural 
beauty, and on the best order and happiness of men's lives. 
I hope to follow out some of these trains of thought in 
gathering together what I have to say about field herbage ; 
but I must say briefly here that the great sign, to the Greeks, 
of the coming of spring in the pastures, was not, as with us, 
in the primrose, but in the various flowers of the asphodel 
tribe (of which I will give you some separate account 
presently) ; therefore it is that the earth answers with crocus 
flame to the cloud on Ida ; and the power of Athena in 
eternal life is written by the light of the asphodel on the 
Elysian fields. 

But farther, Athena is the air, not only to the lilies of the 
field, but to the leaves of the forest. We saw before the 



3 I 8 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

reason why Hermes is said to be the son of Maia, the eldest 
of the sister stars of spring. Those stars are called not 
only Pleiades, but Vergiliae, from a word mingling the ideas 
of the turning or returning of spring-time with the outpour- 
ing of rain. The mother of Virgil bearing the name of Maia, 
Virgil himself received his name from the seven stars ; and 
he, in forming, first, the mind of Dante, and through him 
that of Chaucer (besides whatever special minor influence 
came from the Pastorals and Georgics) became the fountain- 
head of all the best literary power connected with the love 
of vegetative nature among civilized races of men. Take 
the fact for what it is worth ; still it is a strange seal of 
coincidence, in word and in reality, upon the Greek dream 
of the power over human life, and its purest thoughts, in the 
stars of spring. But the first syllable of the name of Virgil 
has relation also to another group of words, of which the 
English ones, virtue and virgin, bring down the force to 
modern days. It is a group containing mainly the idea of 
"spring," or increase of life in vegetation- — the rising of the 
new branch of the tree out of the bud, and of the new leaf 
out of the ground. It involves, secondarily, the idea of 
greenness and of strength, but primarily, that of living 
increase of a new rod from a stock, stem, or root ; ("There 
shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse";) and 
chiefly the stem of certain plants — either of the rose tribe, 
as in the budding of the almond rod of Aaron ; or of the 
olive tribe, which has triple significance in this symbolism, 
from the use of its oil for sacred anointing, for strength in 
the gymnasium, and for light. Hence, in numberless 
divided and reflected ways, it is connected with the power 
of Hercules and Athena : Hercules plants the wild olive, for 
its shade, on the course of Olympia, and it thenceforward 
gives the Olympic crown, of consummate honor and rest ; 
while the prize at the Panathenaic games is a vase of its oil 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 319 

(meaning encouragement to continuance of effort); and 
from the paintings on these Panathenaic vases we get the 
most precious clue to the entire character of Athena. Then 
to express its propagation by slips, the trees from which the 
oil was to be taken were called "Moriai," trees of division 
(being all descendants of the sacred one in the Erech- 
theum). And thus, in one direction, we get to the "chil- 
dren like olive plants round about thy table," and the olive 
grafting of St. Paul ; while the use of the oil for anointing 
gives chief name to the rod itself of the stem of Jesse, and 
to all those who were by that name signed for his disciples 
first in Antioch. . Remember, farther, since that name was 
first given, the influence of the symbol, both in extreme 
unction, and in consecration of priests and kings to their 
"divine right"; and think, if you can reach with any grasp 
of thought, what the influence on the earth has been, of 
those twisted branches whose leaves give gray bloom to the 
hill-sides under every breeze that blows from the* midland 
sea. But, above and beyond all, think how strange it is 
that the chief Agonia of humanity, and the chief giving of 
strength from heaven for its fulfillment, should have been 
under its night shadow in Palestine. 

39. Thirdly — Athena is the air in its power over the sea. 

On the earliest Panathenaic vase known — the "Burgon" 
vase in the British Museum — Athena has a dolphin on her 
shield. The dolphin has two principal meanings in Greek 
symbolism. It means, first, the sea ; secondarily, the 
ascending and descending course of any of the heavenly 
bodies from one sea horizon to another — the dolphins' 
arching rise and replunge (in a summer evening, out of 
calm sea, their black backs roll round with exactly the slow 
motion of a water-wheel ; but I do not know how far Aris- 
totle's exaggerated account of their leaping or their swiftness 
has. any foundation) being taken as a type of the emergence 



320 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

of the sun or stars from the sea in the east, and plunging 
beneath in the west. Hence, Apollo, when in his personal 
power he crosses the sea, leading his Cretan colonists to 
Pytho, takes the form of a dolphin, becomes Apollo Del- 
phinius, and names the founded colony "Delphi." The 
lovely drawing of the Delphic Apollo on the hydria, of the 
Vatican (Le Normand and De Witte, Vol. II. p. 6) gives 
the entire conception of this myth. Again, the beautiful 
coins of Tarentum represent Taras coming to found the 
city, riding on a dolphin, whose leaps and plunges have 
partly the rage of the sea in them, and partly the spring of 
the horse, because the splendid riding of the Tarentines had 
made their name proverbial in Magna Graecia. The story 
of Arion is a collateral fragment of the same thought ; and, 
again, the plunge before their transformation, of the ships 
of Aeneas. Then, this idea of career upon, or conquest of 
the sea, either by the creatures themselves, or by dolphin- 
like ships (compare the Merlin prophecy, — 

" They shall ride 
Over ocean wide 
With hempen bridle, and horse of tree,") 

connects itself with the thought of undulation, and of the 
wave-power in the sea itself, which is always expressed by 
the serpentine bodies either of the sea-gods or of the sea- 
horse ; and when Athena carries, as she does often in later 
work, a serpent for her shield-sign, it is not so much the 
repetition of her own aegis-snakes as the farther expression 
of her power over the sea-wave ; which, finally, Virgil gives 
in its perfect unity with her own anger, in the approach of 
the serpents against Laocoon from the sea ; and then, 
finally, when her own storm-power is fully put forth on the 
ocean also, and the madness of the aegis-snake is given to 
the wave-snake, the sea-wave becomes the devouring hound 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 321 

at the waist of Scylla, and Athena takes Scylla for her 
helmet-crest ; while yet her beneficent and essential power 
on the ocean, in making navigation possible, is commemo- 
rated in the Panathenaic festival by her peplus being carried 
to the Erechtheum suspended from the mast of a ship. 

In Plate cxv. of Vol. II., Le Normand, are given two sides 
of a vase, which, in rude and childish way, assembles most 
of the principal thoughts regarding Athena in this relation. 
In the first, the sunrise is represented by the ascending 
chariot of Apollo, foreshortened ; the light is supposed to 
blind the eyes, and no face of the god is seen (Turner, in 
the Ulysses and Polyphemus sunrise, loses the form of the 
god in light, giving the chariot-horses only ; rendering in his 
own manner, after 2,200 years of various fall and revival of 
the arts, precisely the same thought as the old Greek potter). 
He ascends out of the sea ; but the sea itself has not yet 
caught the light. In the second design, Athena as the 
morning breeze, and Hermes as the morning cloud, fly 
over the sea before the sun. Hermes turns back his head ; 
his face is unseen in the cloud, as Apollo's in the light: the 
grotesque appearance of an animal's face is only the cloud- 
phantasm modifying a frequent form of the hair of Hermes 
beneath the back of his cap. Under the morning breeze, 
the dolphins leap from the rippled sea, and their sides catch 
the light. 

The coins of the Lucanian Heracleia give a fair represen- 
tation of the helmed Athena, as imagined in later Greek art, 
with the embossed Scylla. 

40. Fourthly — Athena is the air nourishing artificial 
light — unconsuming fire. Therefore, a lamp was always 
kept burning in the Erechtheum ; and the torch-race belongs 
chiefly to her festival, of which the meaning is to show 
the danger of the perishing of the light even by excess 
of the air that nourishes it : and so that the race is not 



322 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

to the swift, but to the wise. The household use of her 
constant light is symbolized in the lovely passage in the 
" Odyssey," where Ulysses and his son move the armor while 
the servants are shut in their chambers, and there is no one 
to hold torches for them; but Athena herself, "having a 
golden lamp," fills all the rooms with light. Her presence 
in war-strength with her favorite heroes is always shown by 
the " unwearied " fire hovering on their helmets and shields ; 
and the image gradually becomes constant and accepted, 
both for the maintenance of household watchfulness, as in 
the parable of the ten virgins, or as the symbol of direct 
inspiration, in the rushing wind and divided flames of Pen- 
tecost : but, together with this thought of unconsuming and 
constant fire, there is always mingled in the Greek mind the 
sense of the consuming by excess, as of the flame by the air, 
so also of the inspired creature by its own fire (thus, again, 
"the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up" — " my zeal 
hath consumed me, because of thine enemies," and the 
like), and especially Athena has this aspect towards the 
truly sensual and bodily strength ; so that to Ares, who is 
himself insane and consuming, the opposite wisdom seems 
to be insane and consuming : " All we the other gods have 
thee against us, O Jove ! when we would give grace to men ; 
for thou hast begotten the maid without a mind — the mis- 
chievous creature, the doer of unseemly evil. All we obey 
thee, and are ruled by thee. Her only thou wilt not resist 
in anything she says or does, because thou didst bear her 
— consuming child as she is." 

41. Lastly — Athena is the air, conveying vibration of 
sound. 

In all the loveliest representations in central Greek art 
of the birth of Athena, Apollo stands close to the sitting 
Jupiter, singing, with a deep, quiet joyfulness, to his lyre. 
The sun is always thought of as the master of time and 



ATHENA IX THE HEAVENS. 323 

rhythm, and as the origin of the composing and inventive 
discovery of melody ; but the air, as the actual element and 
substance of the voice, the prolonging and sustaining power 
of it, and the symbol of its moral passion. Whatever in 
music is measured and designed, belongs therefore to Apollo 
and the Muses ; whatever is impulsive and passionate, to 
Athena : hence her constant strength of voice or cry (as 
when she aids the shout of Achilles) curiously opposed to 
the dumbness of Demeter. The Apolline lyre, therefore, is 
not so much the instrument producing sound, as its measurer 
and divider by length or tension of string into given notes ; 
and I believe it is in a double connection with its office as 
a measurer of time or motion, and its relation to the transit 
of the sun in the sky, that Hermes forms it from the tor- 
toise-shell, which is the image of the dappled concave of 
the cloudy sky. Thenceforward all the limiting or restrain- 
ing modes of music belong to the Muses ; but the passionate 
music is wind music, as in the Doric flute. Then, when this 
inspired music becomes degraded in its passion, it sinks into 
the pipe of Pan, and the double pipe of Marsyas, and is then 
rejected by Athena. The myth which represents her doing 
so is, that she invented the double pipe from hearing the hiss 
of the Gorgonian serpents ; but when she played upon it, 
chancing to see her face reflected in water, she saw that it 
was distorted, whereupon she threw down the flute, which 
Marsyas found. Then, the strife of Apollo and Marsyas 
represents the enduring contest between music in which the 
words and thought lead, and the lyre measures or melodizes 
them (which Pindar means when he calls his hymns " kings 
over the lyre "), and music in which the words are lost, and 
the wind or impulse leads, — generally, therefore, between 
intellectual, and brutal, or meaningless music. Therefore, 
when Apollo prevails, he flays Marsyas, taking the limit and 
external bond of his shape from him, which is death, without 



324 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

touching the mere muscular strength ; yet shameful and 
dreadful in dissolution. 

42. And the opposition of these two kinds of sound is 
continually dwelt upon by the Greek philosophers, the real 
fact at the root of all their teaching being this, — that true 
music is the natural expression of a lofty passion for a right 
cause ; that in proportion to the kingliness and force of any 
personality, the expression either of its joy or suffering 
becomes measured, chastened, calm, and capable of inter- 
pretation only by the majesty of ordered, beautiful, and 
worded sound. Exactly in proportion to the degree in 
which we become narrow in the cause and conception of 
our passions, incontinent in the utterance of them, feeble of 
perseverance in them, sullied or shameful in the indulgence 
of them, their expression by musical sound becomes broken, 
mean, fatuitous, and at last impossible ; the measured waves 
of the air of heaven will not lend themselves to expression 
of ultimate vice, it must be forever sunk into discordance 
or silence. And since, as before stated, every work of right 
art has a tendency to reproduce the ethical state which first 
developed it, this, which of all the arts is most directly 
ethical in origin, is also me most direct in power of disci- 
pline ; the first, the simplest, the most effective of all instru- 
ments of moral instruction ; while in the failure and betrayal 
of its functions, it becomes the subtlest aid of moral degra- 
dation. Music is thus, in her health, the teacher of perfect 
order, and is the voice of the obedience of angels, and the 
companion of the course of the spheres of heaven ; and in 
her depravity she is also the teacher of perfect disorder 
and disobedience, and the Gloria in Excelsis becomes the 
Marseillaise. In the third section of this volume, I reprint 
two chapters from another essay of mine, (" The Cestus of 
Aglaia "), on modesty or measure, and on liberty, containing 
farther reference to music in her two powers ; and I do this 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 325 

now, because, among the many monstrous and misbegotten 
fantasies which are the spawn of modern license, perhaps 
the most impishly opposite to the truth is the conception of 
music which has rendered possible the writing, by educated 
persons, and, more strangely yet, the tolerant criticism, of 
such words as these : — "This so persuasive art is the only 
one that has no didactic efficacy, that engenders no emotions 
save such as are without' issue on the side of moral truth, 
that expresses nothing of God, nothing of reason, nothing of 
human liberty." I will not give the author's name ; the 
passage is quoted in the Westminster Review for last January, 

P- 153- 

43. I must, also, anticipate something of what I have 
to say respecting the relation of the power of Athena to 
organic life, so far as to note that her name, Pallas, proba- 
bly refers to the quivering or vibration of the air ; and to 
its power, whether as vital force, or communicated wave, 
over every kind of matter, in giving it vibratory movement ; 
first, and most intense, in the voice and throat of the bird ; 
which is the air incarnate ; and so descending through the 
various orders of animal life to the vibrating and semi- 
voluntary murmur of the insect ; and, lower still, to the 
hiss, or quiver of the tail, of the half-lunged snake and deaf 
adder ; all these, nevertheless, being wholly under the rule 
of Athena as representing either breath, or vital nervous 
power ; and therefore, also, in their simplicity, the " oaten 
pipe and pastoral song," which belong to her dominion over 
the asphodel meadows, and breathe on their banks of violets. 

Finally, is it not strange to think of the influence of this 
one power of Pallas in vibration (we shall see a singular 
mechanical energy of it presently in the serpent's motion) 
in the voices of war and peace ? How much of the repose 
— how much of the wrath, folly, and misery of men, has 
literally depended on this one power of the air ; — on the 



326 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

sound of the trumpet and of the bell — on the lark's song, 
and the bee's murmur. 

44. Such is the general conception in the Greek mind 
of the physical power of Athena. The spiritual power 
associated with it is of two kinds ; — first, she is the Spirit 
of Life in material organism; not strength in the blood only, 
but formative energy in the clay ; and, secondly, she is 
inspired and impulsive wisdom * in human conduct and 
human art, giving the instinct of infallible decision, and of 
faultless invention. 

It is quite beyond the scope of my present purpose — and, 
indeed, will only be possible for me at all after marking 
the relative intention of the Apolline myths — to trace for 
you the Greek conception of Athena as the guide of moral 
passion. But I will at least endeavor, on some near occa- 
sion, 1 to define some of the actual truths respecting the 
vital force in created organism, and inventive fancy in the 
works of man, which are more or less expressed by the 
Greeks, under the personality of Athena. You would, 
perhaps, hardly bear with me if I endeavored farther to 
show you — what is, nevertheless, perfectly true — the anal- 
ogy between the spiritual power of Athena in her gentle 
ministry, yet irresistible anger, with the ministry of another 
Spirit whom we, also, holding for the universal power of life, 
are forbidden, at our worst peril, to quench or to grieve. 2 

45. But, I think, to-night, you should not let me close, 
without requiring of me an answer on one vital point, 
namely, how far these imaginations of Gods — which are 
vain to us — were vain to those who had no better trust, 
and what real belief the Greek had in these creations of 
his own spirit, practical and helpful to him in the sorrow 
of earth ? I am able to answer you explicitly in this. 

1 1 have tried to do this in mere outline in the two following sections 
of this volume. 2 1 Thessalonians v. 19. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 327 

The origin of his thoughts is often obscure, and we may 
err in endeavoring to account for their form of realization ; 
but the effect of that realization on his life is not obscure at 
all. The Greek creed was, of course, different in its char- 
acter, as our own creed is, according to the class of persons 
who held it. The common people's was quite literal, sim- 
ple, and happy; their idea of Athena was as clear as a good 
Roman Catholic peasant's idea of the Madonna. In Athens 
itself, the center of thought and refinement, Pisistratus 
obtained the reins of government through the ready belief 
of the populace that a beautiful woman, armed like Athena, 
was the goddess herself. Even at the close of the last 
century, some of this simplicity remained among the inhabit- 
ants of the Greek islands ; and when a pretty English lady 
first made her way into the grotto of Antiparos, she was 
surrounded, on her return, by all the women of the neigh- 
boring village, believing her to be divine, and praying her to 
heal them of their sicknesses. 

46. Then, secondly, the creed of the upper classes was 
more refined and spiritual, but quite as honest, and even 
more forcible in its effect on the life. You might imagine 
that the employment of the artifice just referred to implied 
utter unbelief in the persons contriving it ; but it really meant 
only that the more worldly of them would play with a popu- 
lar faith for their own purposes, as doubly-minded persons 
have often done since, all the while sincerely holding the same 
ideas themselves in a more abstract form ; while the good 
and unworldly men, the true Greek heroes, lived by their faith 
as firmly as St. Louis, or the Cid, or the Chevalier Bayard. 

47. Then, thirdly, the faith of the poets and artists was, 
necessarily, less definite, being continually modified by the 
involuntary action of their own fancies ; and by the neces- 
sity of presenting, in clear verbal or material form, things of 
which they had no authoritative knowledge. Their faith 



32 8 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

was, in some respects, like Dante's or Milton's ; firm in 
general conception, but not able to vouch for every detail 
in the forms they gave it ; but they went considerably 
farther, even in that minor sincerity, than subsequent poets; 
and strove with all their might to be as near the truth 
as they could. Pindar says, quite simply, "I cannot think 
so-and-so of the Gods. It must have been this way- — it 
cannot have been that way — that the thing was done." 
And as late among the Latins as the days of Horace, 
this sincerity remains. Horace is just as true and simple 
in his religion as Wordsworth; but all power of understand- 
ing any of the honest classic poets has been taken away 
from most English gentlemen by the mechanical drill in 
verse-writing at school. Throughout the whole of their 
lives afterwards, they never can get themselves quit of the 
notion that all verses were written as an exercise, and that 
Minerva was only a convenient word for the last of an 
hexameter, and Jupiter for the last but one. 

48. It is impossible that any notion can be more falla- 
cious or more misleading in its consequences. All great 
song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, 
has been sincere song. With deliberate didactic purpose 
the tragedians — with pure and native passion the lyrists — 
fitted their perfect Avords to their dearest faiths. " Operosa 
parvus carmina fingo." "I, little thing that I am, weave 
my laborious songs " as earnestly as the bee among the 
bells of thyme on the Matin mountains. Yes, and he dedi- 
cates his favorite pine to Diana, and he chants his autumnal 
hymn to the Faun that guards his fields, and he guides the 
noble youths and maids of Rome in their choir to Apollo, 
and he tells the farmer's little girl that the Gods will love 
her, though she has only a handful of salt and meal to give 
them — just as earnestly as ever English gentleman taught 
Christian faith to English youth in England's truest days. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS. 329 

49. Then, lastly, the creed of the philosophers or sages 
varied according to the character and knowledge of each ; 
— their relative acquaintance with the secrets of natural 
science — their intellectual and sectarian egotism — and 
their mystic or monastic tendencies, for there is a classic as 
well as a mediaeval monasticism. They ended in losing the 
life of Greece in play upon words ; but we owe to their 
early thought some of the soundest ethics, and the founda- 
tion of the best practical laws, yet known to mankind. 

50. Such was the general vitality of the heathen creed in 
its strength. Of its direct influence on conduct, it is, as 
I said, impossible for me to speak now ; only, remember 
always, in endeavoring to form a judgment of it, that what 
of good or right the heathens did, they did looking for no 
reward. The purest forms of our own religion have always 
consisted in sacrificing less things to win greater; — time, 
to win eternity, ■ — the world, to win the skies. The order, 
" sell that thou hast," is not given without the promise, — 
"thou shalt have treasure in heaven"; and well for the 
modern Christian if he accepts the alternative as his Master 
left it — and does not practically read the command and 
promise thus : " Sell that thou hast in the best market, and 
thou shalt have treasure in eternity also." But the poor 
Greeks of the great ages expected no reward from heaven 
but honor, and no reward from earth but rest; — though, 
when, on those conditions, they patiently, and proudly, 
fulfilled their task of the granted day, an unreasoning 
instinct of an immortal benediction broke from their lips in 
song : and they, even they, had sometimes a prophet to tell 
them of a land "where there is sun alike by day, and alike 
by night — where they shall need no more to trouble the 
earth by strength of hands for daily bread — but the ocean 
breezes blow around the blessed islands, and golden flowers 
burn on their bright trees forever more." 



330 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 



II. ATHENA KERAMITIS. 1 

ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 

Study, supplementary to the preceding lecture, of the stipposed, and actual, 
relations of Athena to the vital force in material organism. 

51. It has been easy to decipher approximately the 
Greek conception of the physical power of Athena in cloud 
and sky, because we know ourselves what clouds and skies 
are, and what the force of the wind is in forming them. 
But it is not at all easy to trace the Greek thoughts about 
the power of Athena in giving life, because we do not our- 
selves know clearly what life is, or in what way the air is 
necessary to it, or what there is, besides the air, shaping the 
forms that it is put into. And it is comparatively of small 
consequence to find out what the Greeks thought or meant, 
until we have determined what we ourselves think, or mean, 
when we translate the Greek word for " breathing " into the 
Latin-English word "spirit." 

52. But it is of great consequence that you should fix 
in your minds — and hold, against the baseness of mere 
materialism on the one hand, and against the fallacies of 
controversial speculation on the other — the certain and 
practical sense of this word "spirit" ; — the sense in which 
you all know that its reality exists, as the power which 
shaped you into your shape, and by which you love, and 
hate, when you have received that shape. You need not 
fear on the one hand, that either the sculpturing or the 
loving power can ever be beaten down by the philosophers 
into a metal, or evolved by them into a gas : but, on the 
other hand, take care that you yourselves, in trying to 

1 "Athena, fit for being made into pottery." I coin the expression 
as a counterpart of 777 irapdtvia, " Clay intact." 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 33 1 

elevate your conception of it, do not lose its truth in a 
dream, or even in a word. Beware always of contending for 
words : you will find them not easy to grasp, if you know 
them in several languages. This very word, which is so 
solemn in your mouths, is one of the most doubtful. In 
Latin it means little more than breathing, and may mean 
merely accent ; in French it is not breath, but wit, and our 
neighbors are therefore obliged, even in their most solemn 
expressions, to say " wit " when we say "ghost." In Greek, 
"pneuma," the word we translate "ghost," means either 
wind or breath, and the relative word " psyche " has, per- 
haps, a more subtle power; yet St. Paul's words "pneumatic 
body " and " psychic body " involve a difference in his mind 
which no words will explain. But in Greek and in English, 
and in Saxon and in Hebrew, and in every articulate tongue 
of humanity, the " spirit of man " truly means his passion 
and virtue, and is stately according to the height of his con- 
ception, and stable according to the measure of his endurance. 

53. Endurance, or patience, that is the central sign of 
spirit ; a constancy against the cold and agony of death ; 
and as, physically, it is by the burning power of the air that 
the heat of the flesh is sustained, so this Athena, spiritually, 
is the queen of all glowing virtue, the unconsuming fire and 
inner lamp of life. And thus, as Hephaestus is lord of the 
fire of the hand, and Apollo of the fire of the brain, so 
Athena of the fire of the heart ; and as Hercules wears for 
his chief armor the skin of the Nemean lion, his chief 
enemy, whom he slew ; and Apollo has for his highest name 
" the Pythian," from his chief enemy, the Python, slain ,■ so 
Athena bears always on her breast the deadly face of her 
chief enemy slain, the Gorgonian cold, and venomous agony, 
that turns living men to stone. 

54. And so long as you have the fire of the heart within 
you, and know the reality of it, you need be under no alarm 



332 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

as to the possibility of its chemical or mechanical analysis. 
The philosophers are very humorous in their ecstasy of hope 
about it ; but the real interest of their discoveries in this 
direction is very small to human-kind. It is quite true that 
the tympanum of the ear vibrates under sound, and that the 
surface of the water in a ditch vibrates too : but the ditch 
hears nothing for all that ; and my hearing is still to me as 
blessed a mystery as ever, and the interval between the 
ditch and me, quite as great. If the trembling sound in my 
ears was once of the marriage-bell which began my happi- 
ness, and is now of the passing-bell which ends it, the 
difference between those two sounds to me cannot be 
counted by the number of concussions. There have been 
some curious speculations lately as to the conveyance of 
mental consciousness by "brain- waves." What does it 
matter how it is conveyed ? The consciousness itself is not 
a wave. It may be accompanied here or there by any 
quantity of quivers and shakes, up or down, of anything you 
can find in the universe that is shakable — what is that to 
me ? My friend is dead, and my — according to modern 
views — vibratory sorrow is not one whit less, or less 
mysterious, to me, than my old quiet one. 

55. Beyond, and entirely unaffected by, any questionings 
of this kind, there are, therefore, two plain facts which we 
should all know : first, that there is a power which gives 
their several shapes to things, or capacities of shape ; and, 
secondly, a power which gives them their several feelings, 
or capacities of feeling ; and that we can increase or destroy 
both of these at our will. By care and tenderness, we can 
extend the range of lovely life in plants and animals ; by our 
neglect and cruelty, we can arrest it, and bring pestilence in 
its stead. Again, by right discipline we can increase our 
strength of noble will and passion, or destroy both. And 
whether these two forces are local conditions of the elements 



ATHENA IX THE EARTH. 333 

in which they appear, or are part of a great force in the 
universe, out of which they are taken, and to which they 
must be restored, is not of the slightest importance to us in 
dealing with them ; neither is the manner of their connection 
with light and air. What precise meaning we ought to attach 
to expressions such as that of the prophecy to the four 
winds that the dry bones might be breathed upon, and might 
live, or why the presence of the vital power should be 
dependent on the chemical action of the air, and its awful 
passing away materially signified by the rendering up of that 
breath or ghost, we cannot at present know, and need not at 
any time dispute. What we assuredly know is that the 
states of life and death are different, and the first more 
desirable than the other, and by effort attainable, whether 
we understand being "born of the spirit" to signify having 
the breath of heaven in our flesh, or its power in our hearts. 

56. As to its power on the body, I will endeavor to tell 
you, having been myself much led into studies involving 
necessary reference both to natural science and mental phe- 
nomena, what, at least, remains to us after science has done 
its worst ; — what the Myth of Athena, as a Formative and 
Decisive power — a Spirit of Creation and Volition, must 
eternally mean for all of us. 

57. It is now (I believe I may use the strong word) 
" ascertained " that heat and motion are fixed in quantity, 
and measurable in the portions that we deal with. We can 
measure out portions of power, as we can measure portions 
of space ; while yet, as far as we know, space may be 
infinite, and force infinite. There may be heat as much 
greater than the sun's, as the sun's heat is greater than a 
candle's ; and force as much greater than the force by 
which the world swings, as that is greater than the force by 
which a cobweb trembles. Now, on heat and force, life is 
inseparably dependent ; and I believe, also, on a form of 



334 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

substance, which the philosophers call "protoplasm." I 
wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When 
I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is 
colored by "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instruc- 
tive ; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is colored 
green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we should see 
more precisely how far we had got. However, it' is a 
curious fact that life is connected with a cellular structure 
called protoplasm, or, in English, "first stuck together": 
whence, conceivably through deuteroplasms, or second stick- 
ings, and tritoplasms, or third stickings, 1 we reach the 
highest plastic phase in the human pottery, which differs 
from common chinaware, primarily, by a measurable degree 
of heat, developed in breathing, which it borrows from the 
rest of the universe while it lives, and which it as certainly 
returns to the rest of the universe, when it dies. 

58. Again, with this heat certain assimilative powers are 
connected, which the tendency of recent discovery is to 
simplify more and more into modes of one force ; or finally 
into mere motion, communicable in various states, but not 
destructible. We will assume that science has done its 
utmost ; and that every chemical or animal force is demon- 
strably resolvable into heat or motion, reciprocally changing 
into each other. I would myself like better, in order of 
thought, to consider motion as a mode of heat than heat as 
a mode of motion : still, granting that we have got thus far, 

1 Or, perhaps, we may be indulged with one consummating gleam of 
" glycasm " — visible " Sweetness," — according to the good old monk 
" Full moon," or " All moonshine." I cannot get at his original Greek, 
but am content with M. Durand's clear French (Manuel d'Iconographie 
Chretienne. Paris, 1845) : — " Lorsque vous aurez fait le proplasme, 
et esquisse un visage, vous ferez les chairs avec le glycasme dont nous 
avons donne la recette. Chez les vieillards, vous indiquerez les rides, 
et chez les jeunes gens, les angles des yeux. C'est ainsi que Ton fait 
les chairs, suivant Panselinos." 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 335 

we have yet to ask, What is heat ? or what motion ? What 
is this "primo mobile," this transitional power, in which all 
things live, and move, and have their being ? It is by 
definition something different from matter, and we may call 
it as we choose — "first cause," or "first light," or "first 
heat" ; but we can show no scientific proof of its not being 
personal, and coinciding with the ordinary conception of a 
supporting spirit in all things. 

59. Still, it is not advisable to apply the word "spirit " 
or " breathing " to it, while it is only enforcing chemical 
affinities ; but, when the chemical affinities are brought 
under the influence of the air, and of the sun's heat, the 
formative force enters an entirely different phase. It does 
not now merely crystallize indefinite masses, but it gives to 
limited portions of matter the power of gathering, selec- 
tively, other elements proper to them, and binding these 
elements into their own peculiar and adopted form. 

This force, now properly called life, or breathing, or 
spirit, is continually creating its own shells of definite shape 
out of the wreck round it : and this is what I mean by 
saying, in the " Ethics of the Dust " : — " you may always 
stand by form against force." For the mere force of 
junction is not spirit ; but the power that catches out of 
chaos charcoal, water, lime, or what not, and fastens them 
down into a given form, is properly called " spirit " ; and 
we shall not diminish, but strengthen our conception of this 
creative energy by recognizing its presence in lower states 
of matter than our own ; — such recognition being enforced 
upon us by a delight we instinctively receive from all the 
forms of matter which manifest it ; and yet more, by the 
glorifying of those forms, in the parts of them that are most 
animated, with the colors that are pleasantest to our senses. 
The most familiar instance of this is the best, and also the 
most wonderful : the blossoming of plants. 



336 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

60. The Spirit in the plant, — that is to say, its power 
of gathering dead matter out of the wreck round it, and 
shaping it into its own chosen shape, — is of course strongest 
at the moment of its flowering, for it then not only gathers, 
but forms, with the greatest energy. 

And where this life is in it at full power, its form becomes 
invested with aspects that are chiefly delightful to our own 
human passions ; namely, first, with the loveliest outlines of 
shape ; and, secondly, with the most brilliant phases of the 
primary colors, blue, yellow, and red or white, the unison of 
all ; and, to make it all more strange, this time of peculiar 
and perfect glory is associated with relations of the plants 
or blossoms to each other, correspondent to the joy of love 
in human creatures, and having the same object in the con- 
tinuance of the race. Only, with respect to plants, as 
animals, we are wrong in speaking as if the object of this 
strong life were only the bequeathing of itself. The flower 
is the end or proper object of the seed, not the seed of the 
flower. The reason for seeds is that flowers may be ; not 
the reason of flowers that seeds may be. The flower itself 
is the creature which the spirit makes ; only, in connection 
with its perfectness, is placed the giving birth to its 
successor. 

61. The main fact, then, about a flower is that it is the 
part of the plant's form developed at the moment of its 
intensest life : and this inner rapture is usually marked 
externally for us by the flush of one or more of the primary 
colors. What the character of the flower shall be, depends 
entirely upon the portion of the plant into which this 
rapture of spirit has been put. Sometimes the life is put 
into its outer sheath, and then the outer sheath becomes 
white and pure, and full of strength and grace ; sometimes 
the life is put into the common leaves, just under the 
blossom, and they become scarlet or purple ; sometimes the 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 337 

life is put into the stalks of the flower, and they flush blue ; 
sometimes into its outer enclosure or calyx ; mostly into 
its inner cup ; but, in all cases, the presence of the strongest 
life is asserted by characters in which the human sight takes 
pleasure, and which seem prepared with distinct reference 
to us, or rather, bear, in being delightful, evidence of having 
been produced by the power of the same spirit as our own. 
62. And we are led to feel this still more strongly because 
all the distinctions of species, 1 both in plants and animals, 
appear to have similar connection with human character. 
Whatever the origin of species may be, or however those 
species, once formed, may be influenced by external accident, 
the groups into which birth or accident reduce them have 
distinct relation to the spirit of man. It it perfectly possi- 
ble, and ultimately conceivable, that the crocodile and the 
lamb may have descended from the same ancestral atom of 
protoplasm : and that the physical laws of the operation of 
calcareous slime and of meadow grass, on that protoplasm, 
may in time have developed the opposite natures and 
aspects of the living frames ; but the practically important 
fact for us is the existence of a power which creates that 
calcareous earth itself ; — which creates, that separately • — ■ 
and quartz, separately ; and gold, separately ; and charcoal, 
separately ; and then so directs the relation of these 
elements as that the gold shall destroy the souls of men by 
being yellow ; and the charcoal destroy their souls by being 
hard and bright ; and the quartz represent to them an 
ideal purity ; and the calcareous earth, soft, shall beget 

1 The facts on which I am about to dwell are in nowise antagonistic 
to the theories which Mr. Darwin's unwearied and unerring investiga- 
tions are every day rendering more probable. The aesthetic relations 
of species are independent of their origin. Nevertheless, it has always 
seemed to me, in what little work I have done upon organic forms, as 
if the species mocked us by their deliberate imitation of each other 
when they met : yet did not pass one into another. 



338 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

crocodiles, and dry and hard, sheep ; and that the aspects 
and qualities of these two products, crocodiles and lambs, 
shall be, the one repellent to the spirit of man, the other 
attractive to it, in a quite inevitable way ; representing to 
him states of moral evil and good ; and becoming myths to 
him of destruction or redemption, and, in the most literal 
sense, "words" of God. 

63. And the force of these facts cannot be escaped from 
by the thought that there are species innumerable, passing 
into each other by regular gradations, out of which we 
choose what we most love or dread, and say they were 
indeed prepared for us. Species are not innumerable ; 
neither are they now connected by consistent gradation. 
They touch at certain points only ; and even then are 
connected, when we examine them deeply, in a kind of 
reticulated way, not in chains, but in chequers ; also, how- 
ever connected, it is but by a touch of the extremities, as 
it were, and the characteristic form of the species is entirely 
individual. The rose nearly sinks into a grass in the 
sanguisorba ; but the formative spirit does not the less 
clearly separate the ear of wheat from the dog-rose, and 
oscillate with tremulous constancy round the central forms 
of both, having each their due relation to the mind of man. 
The great animal kingdoms are connected in the same way. 
The bird through the penguin drops towards the fish, and 
the fish in the cetacean reascends to the mammal, yet there 
is no confusion of thought possible between the perfect 
forms of an eagle, a trout, and a war-horse, in their relations 
to the elements, and to man. 

64. Now we have two orders of animals to take some 
note of in connection with Athena, and one vast order of 
plants, which will illustrate this matter very sufficiently for us. 

The orders of animals are the serpent and the bird ; the 
serpent, in which the breath or spirit is less than in any 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 339 

other creature, and the earth-power greatest : — the bird, 
in which the breath or spirit is more full than in any other 
creature, and the earth-power least. 

65. Wc will take the bird first. It is little more than 
a drift of the air brought into form by plumes ; the air is 
in all its quills, it breathes through its whole frame and 
flesh, and glows with air in its flying, like blown flame : 
it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, outraces it : — 
is the air, conscious of itself, conquering itself, ruling itself. 

Also, into the throat of the bird is given the voice of the 
air. All that in the wind itself is weak, wild, useless in 
sweetness, is knit together in its song. As we may imagine 
the wild form of the cloud closed into the perfect form of 
the bird's wings, so the wild voice of the cloud into its 
ordered and commanded voice ; unwearied, rippling through 
the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all intense 
passion through the soft spring nights, bursting into acclaim 
and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping and twittering 
among the boughs and hedges through heat of day, like 
little winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, and 
ruffle the petals of the wild rose. 

66. Also, upon the plutnes of the bird are put the colors 
of the air : on these the gold of the cloud, that cannot be 
gathered by any covetousness ; the rubies of the clouds, 
that are not the price of Athena, but a?-e Athena ; the ver- 
milion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the cloud-crest, 
and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, and the melted 
blue of the deep wells of the sky — all these, seized by the 
creating spirit, and woven by Athena herself into films and 
threads of plume ; with wave on wave following and fading 
along breast, and throat, and opened wings, infinite as the 
dividing of the foam and the sifting of the sea-sand ; — even 
the white down of the cloud seeming to flutter up between 
the stronger plumes, seen, but too soft for touch. 



340 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, and upon, this 
created form ; and it becomes, through twenty centuries, the 
symbol of divine help, descending, as the Fire, to speak, but 
as the Dove, to bless. 

67. Next, in the serpent, we approach the source of a 
group of myths, world-wide, founded on great and common 
human instincts, respecting which I must note one or two 
points which bear intimately on all our subject. For it 
seems to me that the scholars who are at present occupied 
in interpretation of human myths have most of them for- 
gotten that there are any such things as natural myths ; 
and that the dark sayings of men may be both difficult to 
read, and not always worth reading ; but the dark sayings 
of nature will probably become clearer for the looking into, 
and will very certainly be worth reading. And, indeed, all 
guidance to the right sense of the human and variable myths 
will probably depend on our first getting at the sense of the 
natural and invariable ones. The dead hieroglyph may have 
meant this or that — the living hieroglyph means always the 
same ; but remember, it is just as much a hieroglyph as the 
other ; nay, more, — a " sacred or reserved sculpture,'' a 
thing with an inner language. The serpent crest of the 
king's crown, or of the god's, on the pillars of Egypt, is 
a mystery ; but the serpent itself, gliding past the pillar's 
foot, is it less a mystery ? Is there, indeed, no tongue, 
except the mute forked flash from its lips, in that running 
brook of horror on the ground ? 

68. Why that horror? We all feel it, yet how imagi- 
native it is, how disproportioned to the real strength of the 
creature ! There is more poison in an ill-kept drain, — ■ in 
a pool of dish-washings at a cottage-door, than in the dead- 
liest asp of Nile. Every back-yard which you look down 
into from the railway, as it carries you out by Vauxhall or 
Deptford, holds its coiled serpent : all the walls of those 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 34I 

ghastly suburbs are enclosures of tank temples for serpent- 
worship ; yet you feel no horror in looking down into them, 
as you would if you saw the livid scales and lifted head. 
There is more venom, mortal, inevitable, in a single word, 
sometimes, or in the gliding entrance of a wordless thought, 
than ever "vanti Libia con sua rena." But that horror is 
of the myth, not of the creature. There are myriads lower 
than this, and more loathsome, in the scale of being ; the 
links between dead matter and animation drift everywhere 
unseen. But it is the strength of the base element that is 
so dreadful in the serpent ; it is the very omnipotence of 
the earth. That rivulet of smooth silver — how does it flow, 
think you ? It literally rows on the earth, with every scale 
for an oar ; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. 
Watch it, when it moves slowly : — A wave, but without 
wind ! a current, but with no fall ! all the body moving 
at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to 
another, or some forward, and the rest of the coil back- 
wards ; but all with the same calm will and equal way — no 
contraction, no extension ; one soundless, causeless, march 
of sequent rings, and spectral procession of spotted dust, 
with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. Startle 
it; — the winding stream will become a twisted arrow; — 
the wave of poisoned life will lash through the grass like 
a cast lance. 1 It scarcely breathes with its one lung (the 

1 I cannot understand this swift forward motion of serpents. The 
seizure of prey by the constrictor, though invisibly swift, is quite simple 
in mechanism ; it is simply the return to its coil of an opened watch- 
spring, and is just as instantaneous. But the steady and continuous 
motion, without a visible fulcrum (for the whole body moves at the 
same instant, and I have often seen even small snakes glide as fast as I 
could walk), seems to involve a vibration of the scales quite too rapid 
to be conceived. The motion of the crest and dorsal fin of the hippo- 
campus, which is one of the intermediate types between serpent and 
fish, perhaps gives some resemblance of it, dimly visible, for the quiver- 



342 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

other shriveled and abortive) ; it is passive to the sun and 
shade, and is cold or hot like a stone ; yet "it can outclimb 
the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle 
the athlete, and crush the tiger." 1 It is a divine hieroglyph 
of the demoniac power of the earth, — of the entire earthly 
nature. As the bird is the clothed power of the air, so this 
is the clothed power of the dust ; as the bird the symbol of 
the spirit of life, so this of the grasp and sting of death. 

69. Hence the continual change in the interpretation put 
upon it in various religions. As the worm of corruption, it 
is the mightiest of all adversaries of the gods — the special 
adversary of their light and creative power — Python against 
Apollo. As the power of the earth against the air, the giants 
are serpent-bodied in the Giganto-machia ; but as the power 
of the earth upon the seed — consuming it into new life 
(" that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die ") 
— serpents sustain the chariot of the spirit of agriculture. 

70. Yet, on the other hand, there is a power in the earth 
to take away corruption, and to purify (hence the very fact 
of burial, and many uses of earth, only lately known) ; and 
in this sense, the serpent is a healing spirit, — the repre- 
sentative of Aesculapius, and of Hygieia ; and is a sacred 
earth-type in the temple of the Dew ; — being there espe- 
cially a symbol of the native earth of Athens ; so that its 
departure from the temple was a sign to the Athenians that 
they were to leave their homes. And then, lastly, as there 
is a strength and healing in the earth, no less than the 
strength of air, so there is conceived to be a wisdom of 
earth no less than a wisdom of the spirit • and when its 

ing turns the fin into a mere mist. The entrance of the two barbs of a 
bee's sting by alternate motion, " the teeth of one barb acting as a ful- 
crum for the other," must be something like the serpent motion on a 
small scale. 

1 Richard Owen. 



ATHENA IX THE EARTH. 343 

deadly power is killed, its guiding power becomes true ; so 
that the Python serpent is killed at Delphi, where yet the 
oracle is from the breath of the earth. 

71. You must remember, however, that in this, as in 
every other instance, I take the myth at its central time. 
This is only the meaning of the serpent to the Greek mind 
which could conceive an Athena. Its first meaning to the 
nascent eyes of men, and its continued influence over 
degraded races, are subjects of the most fearful mystery. 
Mr. Fergusson has just collected the principal evidence 
bearing on the matter in a work of very great value, and if 
you read his opening chapters, they will put you in posses- 
sion of the circumstances needing chiefly to be considered. 
I cannot touch upon any of them here, except only to point 
out that, though the doctrine of the so-called " corruption of 
human nature," asserting that there is nothing but evil in 
humanity, is just as blasphemous and false as a doctrine of 
the corruption of physical nature would be, asserting there 
was nothing but evil in the earth, — there is yet the clearest 
evidence of a disease, plague, or cretinous imperfection of 
development, hitherto allowed to prevail against the greater 
part of the races of men ; and this in monstrous ways, more 
full of mystery than the serpent-being itself. I have gath- 
ered for you to-night only instances of what is beautiful in 
Greek religion ; but even in its best time there were deep 
corruptions in other phases of it, and degraded forms of 
many of its deities, all originating in a misunderstood wor- 
ship of the principle of life ; while in the religions of lower 
races, little else than these corrupted forms of devotion can 
be found ; — all having a strange and dreadful consistency 
with each other, and infecting Christianity, even at its 
strongest periods, with fatal terror of doctrine, and ghast- 
liness of symbolic conception, passing through fear into 
frenzied grotesque, and thence into sensuality. 



344 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

In the Psalter of St. Louis itself, half of its letters are 
twisted snakes ; there is scarcely a wreathed ornament, 
employed in Christian dress, or architecture, which cannot 
be traced back to the serpent's coil ; and there is rarely a 
piece of monkish decorated writing in the world, that is not 
tainted with some ill-meant vileness of grotesque — nay, the 
very leaves of the twisted ivy-pattern of the fourteenth 
century can be followed back to wreaths for the foreheads of 
bacchanalian gods. And truly, it seems to me, as I gather 
in my mind the evidences of insane religion, degraded art, 
merciless war, sullen toil, detestable pleasure, and vain or 
vile hope, in which the nations of the world have lived since 
first they could bear record of themselves — it seems to me, 
I say, as if the race itself were still half-serpent, not extri- 
cated yet from its clay ; a lacertine breed of bitterness — 
the glory of it emaciate with cruel hunger, and blotted with 
venomous stain : and the track of it, on the leaf a glittering 
slime, and in the sand a useless furrow. 

72. There are no myths, therefore, by which the moral 
state and fineness of intelligence of different races can be 
so deeply tried or measured, as by those of the serpent and 
the bird ; both of them having an especial relation to the 
kind of remorse for sin, or grief in fate, of which the national 
minds that spoke by them had been capable. The serpent 
and vulture are alike emblems of immortality and purifi- 
cation among races which desired to be immortal and pure: 
and as they recognize their own misery, the serpent becomes 
to them the scourge of the Furies, and the vulture finds its 
eternal prey in their breast. The bird long contests among 
the Egyptians with the still received serpent symbol of 
power. But the Draconian image of evil is established in 
the serpent Apap ; while the bird's wings, with the globe, 
become part of a better symbol of deity, and the entire form 
of the vulture, as an emblem of purification, is associated 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 345 

with the earnest conception of Athena. In the type of the 
dove with the olive branch, the conception of the spirit of 
Athena in renewed life prevailing oyer ruin, is embodied for 
the whole of futurity ; while the Greeks, to whom, in a hap- 
pier climate and higher life than that of Egypt, the vulture 
symbol of cleansing became unintelligible, took the eagle, 
instead, for their hieroglyph of supreme spiritual energy, 
and it thenceforward retains its hold on the human imagi- 
nation, till it is established among Christian myths as the 
expression of the most exalted form of evangelistic teaching. 
The special relation of Athena to her favorite bird we will 
trace presently: the peacock of Hera, and dove of Aphro- 
dite, are comparatively unimportant myths: but the bird 
power is soon made entirely human by the Greeks in their 
flying angel of victory (partially human, with modified 
meaning of evil, in the Harpy and Siren); and thencefor- 
ward it associates itself with the Hebrew cherubim, and has 
had the most singular influence on the Christian religion 
by giving its wings to render the conception of angels 
mysterious and untenable, and check rational endeavor to 
determine the nature of subordinate spiritual agency - while 
yet it has given to that agency a vague poetical influence of 
the highest value in its own imaginative way. 

73. But with the early serpent- worship there was asso- 
ciated another — that of the groves — of which you will also 
find the evidence exhaustively collected in Mr. Fergusson's 
work. This tree-worship may have taken a dark form when 
associated with the Draconian one ; or opposed, as in Judea, 
to a purer faith ; but in itself, I believe, it was always 
healthy, and though it retains little definite hieroglyphic 
power in subsequent religion, it becomes, instead of sym- 
bolic, real ; the flowers and trees are themselves beheld and 
beloved with a half-worshiping delight, which is always 
noble and healthful. 



346 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

And it is among the most notable indications of the 
volition of the animating power, that we find the ethical 
signs of good and evil .set on these also, as well as upon 
animals ; the venom of the serpent, and in some respects 
its image also, being associated even with the passionless 
growth of the leaf out of the ground ; while the distinctions 
of species seem appointed with more definite ethical address 
to the intelligence of man as their material products become 
more useful to him. 

74. I can easily show this, and, at the same time, make 
clear the relation to other plants of the flowers which especi- 
ally belong to Athena, by examining the natural myths in 
the groups of the plants which would be used at any country 
dinner, over which Athena would, in her simplest house- 
hold authority, cheerfully rule, here, in England. Suppose 
Horace's favorite dish of beans, with the bacon ; potatoes ; 
some savory stuffing of onions and herbs with the meat ; 
celery, and a radish or two, with the cheese ; nuts and 
apples for dessert, and brown bread. 

75. The beans are, from earliest time, the most important 
and interesting of the seeds of the great tribe of plants from 
which came the Latin and French name for all kitchen 
vegetables, — things that are gathered with the hand — 
podded seeds that cannot be reaped, or beaten, or shaken 
down, but must be gathered green. "Leguminous" plants, 
all of them having flowers like butterflies, seeds in (fre- 
quently pendent) pods, — "laetum siliqua quassante legu- 
raen" — smooth and tender leaves, divided into many minor 
ones ; — strange adjuncts of tendril, for climbing (and some- 
times of thorn); — exquisitely sweet, yet pure, scents of 
blossom, and almost always harmless, if not serviceable, 
seeds. It is, of all tribes of plants, the most definite ; its 
blossoms being entirely limited in their parts, and not pass- 
ing into other forms. It is also the most usefully extended 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 347 

in range and scale; familiar in the height of the forest- — 
acacia, laburnum, Judas-tree ; familiar in the sown field 
— bean and vetch and pea; familiar in the pasture — 
in every form of clustered clover and sweet trefoil tracery; 
the most entirely serviceable and human of all orders 
of plants. 

76. Next, in the potato, we have the scarcely innocent 
underground stem of one of a tribe set aside for evil ; hav- 
ing the deadly nightshade for its queen, and including the 
henbane, the witch's mandrake, and the worst natural 
curse of modern civilization — tobacco. 1 And the strange 
thing about this tribe is, that though thus set aside for evil, 
they are not a group distinctly separate from those that are 
happier in function. There is nothing in other tribes of 
plants like the form of the bean blossom ; but there is 
another family with forms and structure closely connected 
with this venomous one. Examine the purple and yellow 
bloom of the common hedge-nightshade ; you will find it 
constructed exactly like some of the forms of the cyclamen : 
and, getting this clue, you will find at last the whole poison- 
ous and terrible group to be — -sisters of the primulas ! 

The nightshades are, in fact, primroses with a curse upon 
them ; and a sign set in their petals, by which the deadly 
and condemned flowers may always be known from the 
innocent ones, — that the stamens of the nightshades are 
between the lobes, and of the primulas, opposite the lobes, 
of the corolla. 

77. Next, side by side, in the celery and radish, you 
have the two great groups of umbelled and cruciferous 
plants ; alike in conditions of rank among herbs : both 
flowering in clusters ; but the umbelled group, flat, the 

1 It is not easy to estimate the demoralizing effect on the youth of 
Europe of the cigar, in enabling them to pass their time happily in 
idleness. 



348 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

crucifers, in spires: — both of them mean and poor in the 
blossom, and losing what beauty they have by too close 
crowding : — both of them having the most curious influence 
on human character in the temperate zones of the earth, 
from the days of the parsley crown, and hemlock drink, 
and mocked Euripidean chervil, until now : but chiefly 
among the northern nations, being especially plants that 
are of some humble beauty, and (the crucifers) of endless 
use, when they are chosen and cultivated ; but that run to 
wild waste, and are the signs of neglected ground, in their 
rank or ragged leaves, and meager stalks, and pursed or 
podded seed clusters. Capable, even under cultivation, 
of no perfect beauty, though reaching some subdued de- 
lightfulness in the lady's smock and the wallflower; for the 
most part, they have every floral quality meanly, and in 
vain, — they are white, without purity ; golden, without 
preciousness ; redundant, without richness ; divided, with- 
out fineness ; massive, without strength ; and slender, 
without grace. Yet think over that useful vulgarity of 
theirs ; and of the relations of German and English peas- 
ant character to its food of kraut and cabbage (as of Arab 
character to its food of palm-fruit), and you will begin to 
feel what purposes of the forming spirit are in these dis- 
tinctions of species. 

78. Next we take the nuts and apples, — the nuts repre- 
senting one of the groups of catkined trees, whose blossoms 
are only tufts and dust ; and the other, the rose tribe, in 
which fruit and flower alike have been the types, to the 
highest races of men, of all passionate temptation, or pure 
delight, from the coveting of Eve to the crowning of the 
Madonna, above the 

" Rose sempiterna, 
Che si dilata, rigrada, e ridole 
Odor di lode al Sol." 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 349 

We have no time now for these, we must go on to the 
humblest group of all, yet the most wonderful, that of the 
grass, which has given us our bread ; and from that we will 
go back to the herbs. 

79. The vast family of plants which, under rain, make 
the earth green for man, and, under sunshine, give him 
bread, and, in their springing in the early year, mixed with 
their native flowers, have given us (far more than the new 
leaves of trees) the thought and word of " spring," divide 
themselves broadly into three great groups — the grasses, 
sedges, and rushes. The grasses are essentially a clothing 
for healthy and pure ground, watered by occasional rain, 
but in itself dry, and fit for all cultivated pasture and corn. 
They are distinctively plants with round and jointed stems, 
which have long green flexible leaves, and heads of seed, 
independently emerging from them. The sedges are essen- 
tially the clothing of waste and more or less poor or uncul- 
tivable soils, coarse in their structure, frequently triangular 
in stem — hence called "acute" by Virgil — and with their 
heads of seed not extricated from their leaves. Now, in 
both the sedges and grasses, the blossom has a common 
structure, though undeveloped in the sedges, but composed 
always of groups of double husks, which have mostly a 
spinous process in the center, sometimes projecting into a 
long awn or beard ; this central process being characteristic 
also of the ordinary leaves of mosses, as if a moss were a 
kind of ear of corn made permanently green on the ground, 
and with a new and distinct fructification. But the rushes 
differ wholly from the sedge and grass in their blossom 
structure. It is not a dual cluster, but a twice threefold 
one, so far separate from the grasses, and so closely con- 
nected with a higher order of plants, that I think you will 
find it convenient to group the rushes at once with that 
higher order, to which, if you will for the present let me 



350 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

give the general name of Drosidae, or dew-plants, it will 
enable me to say what I have to say of them much more 
shortly and clearly. 

80. These Drosidae, then, are plants delighting in inter- 
rupted moisture — moisture which comes either partially or 
at certain seasons — into dry ground. They are not water- 
plants ; but the signs of water resting among dry places. 
Many of the true water-plants have triple blossoms, with a 
small triple calyx holding them ; in the Drosidae, the floral 
spirit passes into the calyx also, and the entire flower be- 
comes a six-rayed star, bursting out of the stem laterally, as 
if it were the first of flowers, and had made its way to the 
light by force through the unwilling green. They are often 
required to retain moisture or nourishment for the future 
blossom through long times of drought ; and this they do in 
bulbs under ground, of which some become a rude and 
simple, but most wholesome, food for man. 

81. So now, observe, you are to divide the whole family 
of the herbs of the field into three great groups — Drosidae, 
Carices, 1 Graminae — dew-plants, sedges, and grasses. Then, 
the Drosidae are divided into five great orders — lilies, 
asphodels, amaryllids, irids, and rushes. No tribes of flowers 
have had so great, so varied, or so healthy an influence on 
man as this great group of Drosidae, depending, not so much 
on the whiteness of some of their blossoms, or the radiance 
of others, as on the strength and delicacy of the substance 
of their petals ; enabling them to take forms of faultless 
elastic curvature, either in cups, as the crocus, or expanding 
bells, as the true lily, or heath-like bells, as the hyacinth, or 
bright and perfect stars, like the star of Bethlehem, or, when 
they are affected by the strange reflex of the serpent nature 

1 1 think Carex will be found ultimately better than Cyperus for the 
generic name, being the Virgilian word, and representing a larger sub- 
species. 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 351 

which forms the labiate group of all flowers, closing into 
forms of exquisitely fantastic symmetry in the gladiolus. 
Put by their side their Nereid sisters, the water-lilies, and 
you have in them the origin of the loveliest forms of orna- 
mental design and the most powerful floral myths yet recog- 
nized among human spirits, born by the streams of Ganges, 
Nile, Arno, and Avon. 

82. For consider a little what each of those five tribes 1 
has been to the spirit of man. First, in their nobleness : 
the Lilies gave the lily of the Annunciation ; the Asphodels, 
the flower of the Elysian fields ; the Irids, the fleur-de-lys of 
chivalry ; and the Amaryllids, Christ's lily of the field ; while 
the rush, trodden always under foot, became the emblem of 
humility. Then take each of the tribes, and consider the 
extent of their lower influence. Perdita's " The crown im- 
perial, lilies of all kinds," are the first tribe ; which, giving 
the type of perfect purity in the Madonna's lily, have, by 
their lovely form, influenced the entire decorative design of 
Italian sacred art ; while ornament of war was continually 
enriched by the curves of the triple petals of the Florentine 
"giglio," and French fleur-de-lys ; so that it is impossible to 
count their influence for good in the middle ages, partly as 
a symbol of womanly character, and partly of the utmost 
brightness and refinement of chivalry in the city which was 
the flower of cities. 

Afterwards, the group of the turban-lilies, or tulips, did 
some mischief (their splendid stains having made them the 
favorite caprice of florists) ; but they may be pardoned all 
such guilt for the pleasure they have given in cottage gar- 
dens, and are yet to give, when lowly life may again be pos- 

1 Take this rough distinction of the four tribes: — Lilies, superior 
ovary, white seeds; Asphodels, superior ovary, black seeds; Irids, in- 
ferior ovary, style (typically) rising into central crest; Amaryllids, 
inferior ovary, stamens (typically) joined in central cup. Then the 
rushes are a dark group, through which they stoop to the grasses. 



352 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

sible among us ; and the crimson bars of the tulips in their 
trim beds, with their likeness in crimson bars of morning 
above them, and its dew glittering heavy, globed in their 
glossy cups, may be loved better than the gray nettles of 
the ash heap, under gray sky, unveined by vermilion or 
by gold. 

83. The next great group, of the Asphodels, divides itself 
also into two principal families ; one, in which the flowers 
are like stars, and clustered characteristically in balls, though 
opening sometimes into looser heads ; and the other, in 
which the flowers are in long bells, opening suddenly at the 
lips, and clustered in spires on a long stem, or drooping from 
it, when bent by their weight. 

The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and onions, has 
always caused me great wonder. I cannot understand why 
its beauty, and serviceableness, should have been associated 
with the rank scent which has been really among the most 
powerful means of degrading peasant life, and separating it 
from that of the higher classes. 

The belled group, of the hyacinth and convallaria, is as 
delicate as the other is coarse : the unspeakable azure light 
along the ground of the wood hyacinth in English spring ; 
the grape hyacinth, which is in south France, as if a cluster 
of grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled and com- 
pressed together into one small boss of celled and beaded 
blue ; the lilies of the valley everywhere, in each sweet and 
wild recess of rocky lands; — count the influences of these 
on childish and innocent life ; then measure the mythic 
power of the hyacinth and asphodel as connected with Greek 
thoughts of immortality ; finally take their useful and nour- 
ishing power in ancient and modern peasant life, and it will 
be strange if you do not feel what fixed relation exists be- 
tween the agency of the creating spirit in these, and in us 
who live by them. 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 353 

84. It is impossible to bring into any tenable compass for 
our present purpose, even hints of the human influence of 
the two remaining orders of Amaryllids and Irids ; — only 
note this generally, that while these in northern countries 
share with the Primulas the fields of spring, it seems that in 
Greece, the primulaceae are not an extended tribe, while the 
crocus, narcissus, and Amaryllis lutea, the " lily of the field " 
(I suspect also that the flower whose name we translate 
" violet " was in truth an Iris), represented to the Greek the 
first coming of the breath of life on the renewed herbage ; 
and became in his thoughts the true embroidery of the 
saffron robe of Athena. Later in the year, the dianthus 
(which, though belonging to an entirely different race of 
plants, has yet a strange look of having been made out of 
the grasses by turning the sheath-membrane at the root of 
their leaves into a flower) seems to scatter, in multitudinous 
families, its crimson stars far and wide. But the golden lily 
and crocus, together with the asphodel, retain always the old 
Greek's fondest thoughts — they are only "golden" flowers 
that are to burn on the trees, and float on the streams of 
paradise. 

85. I have but one tribe of plants more to note at our 
country feast- — the savory herbs ; but must go a little out 
of my way to come at them rightly. All flowers whose 
petals are fastened together, and most of those whose petals 
are loose, are best thought of first as a kind of cup or tube 
opening at the mouth. Sometimes the opening is gradual, 
as in the convolvulus or campanula - T oftener there is a dis- 
tinct change of direction between the tube and expanding 
lip, as in the primrose ; or even a contraction under the lip, 
making the tube into a narrow-necked phial or vase, as in 
the heaths, but the general idea of a tube expanding into a 
quatrefoil, cinquefoil, or sixfoil, will embrace most of the 
forms. 



354 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

86. Now it is easy to conceive that flowers of this kind, 
growing in close clusters, may, in process of time, have 
extended their outside petals rather than the interior ones 
(as the outer flowers of the clusters of many umbellifers 
actually do) and thus, elongated and variously distorted 
forms have established themselves ; then if the stalk is 
attached to the side instead of the base of the tube, its base 
becomes a spur, and thus all the grotesque forms of the 
mints, violets, and larkspurs, gradually might be composed. 
But, however this may be, there is one great tribe of plants 
separate from the rest, and of which the influence seems 
shed upon the rest in different degrees ; and these would 
give the impression, not so much of having been developed 
by change, as of being stamped with a character of their 
own, more or less serpentine or dragon-like. And I think 
you will find it convenient to call these generally, Dracon- 
idae; disregarding their present ugly botanical name, which 
I do not care even to write once — you may take for their 
principal types the Foxglove, Snapdragon, and Calceolaria ; 
and you will find they all agree in a tendency to decorate 
themselves by spots, and with bosses or swollen places in 
their leaves, as if they had been touched by poison. The 
spot of the Foxglove is especially strange, because it draws 
the color out of the tissue all around it, as if it had been 
stung, and as if the central color was really an inflamed 
spot, with paleness round. Then also they carry to its 
extreme the decoration by bulging or pouting the petals; — 
often beautifully used by other flowers in a minor degree, 
like the beating out of bosses in hollow silver, as in the 
kalmia, beaten out apparently in each petal by the stamens 
instead of a hammer ; or the borage, pouting inwards ; but 
the snapdragons and calceolarias carry it to its extreme. 

87. Then the spirit of these Draconidae seems to pass 
more or less into other flowers, whose forms are properly 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 355 

pure vases; but it affects some of them slightly, — others 
not at all. It never strongly affects the heaths ; never once 
the roses ; but it enters like an evil spirit into the buttercup, 
and turns it into a larkspur, with a black, spotted, grotesque 
center, and a strange, broken blue, gorgeous and intense, 
yet impure, glittering on the surface as if it were strewn 
with broken glass, and stained or darkening irregularly into 
red. And then at last the serpent charm changes the 
ranunculus into monkshood ; and makes it poisonous. It 
enters into the forget-me-not, and the star of heavenly 
turquoise is corrupted into the viper's bugloss, darkened 
with the same strange red as the larkspur, and fretted into 
a fringe of thorn ; it enters, together with a strange insect- 
spirit, into the asphodels, and (though with a greater inter- 
val between the groups) they change into spotted orchideae: 
it touches the poppy, it becomes a fumaria ; the iris, and it 
pouts into a gladiolus ; the lily, and it chequers itself into a 
snake's-head, and secretes in the deep of its bell, drops, not 
of venom indeed, but honey-dew, as if it were a healing 
serpent. For there is an Aesculapian as well as an evil 
serpentry among the Draconidae, and the fairest of them, the 
"erba della Madonna" of Venice (Linaria Cymbalaria), 
descends from the ruins it delights in to the herbage at their 
feet, and touches it ; and behold, instantly, a vast group of 
herbs for healing, — all draconid in form, — spotted, and 
crested, and from their lip-like corollas named "labiatae"; 
full of various balm, and warm strength for healing, yet all 
of them without splendid honor or perfect beauty, "ground 
ivies," richest when crushed under the foot ; the best sweet- 
ness and gentle brightness of the robes of the field, — 
thyme, and marjoram, and Euphrasy. 

88. And observe, again and again, with respect to all 
these divisions and powers of plants ; it does not matter in 
the least by what concurrences of circumstance or necessity 



356 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

they may gradually have been developed : the concurrence 
of circumstance is itself the supreme and inexplicable fact. 
We always come at last to a formative cause, which directs 
the circumstance, and mode of meeting it. If you ask an 
ordinary botanist the reason of the form of a leaf, he will 
tell you it is a "developed tubercle," and that its ultimate 
form "is owing to the direction of its vascular threads." 
But what directs its vascular threads? "They are seeking 
for something they want," he will probably answer. What 
made them want that? What made them seek for it thus? 
Seek for it, in five fibres or in three ? Seek for it, in serra- 
tion, or in sweeping curves ? Seek for it, in servile tendrils, 
or impetuous spray? Seek for it, in woolen wrinkles rough 
with stings, or in glossy surfaces, green with pure strength, 
and winterless delight? 

89. There is no answer. But the sum of all is, that over 
the entire surface of the earth and its waters, as influenced 
by the power of the air under solar light, there is developed 
a series of changing forms, in clouds, plants, and animals, 
all of which have reference in their action, or nature, to the 
human intelligence that perceives them ; and on which, in 
their aspects of horror and beauty, and their qualities of 
good and evil, there is engraved a series of myths, or words 
of the forming power, which, according to the true passion 
and energy of the human race, they have been enabled to 
read into religion. And this forming power has been by all 
nations partly confused with the breath or air through which 
it acts, and partly understood as a creative wisdom, proceed- 
ing from the Supreme Deity; but entering into and inspiring 
all intelligences that work in harmony with Him. And 
whatever intellectual results may be in modern days 
obtained by regarding this effluence only as a motion of 
vibration, every formative human art hitherto, and the best 
states of human happiness and order, have depended on the 



ATHENA IX THE EARTH. 357 

apprehension of its mystery (which is certain), and of its 
personality, which is probable. 

90. Of its influence on the formative arts, I have a few 
words to say separately : my present business is only to 
interpret, as we are now sufficiently enabled to do, the 
external symbols of the myth under which it was represented 
by the Greeks as a goddess of counsel, taken first into the 
breast of their supreme Deity, then created out of his 
thoughts, and abiding closely beside him ; always sharing 
and consummating his power. 

9 1 . And in doing this we have first to note the meaning 
of the principal epithet applied to Athena, " Glaukopis," 
"with eyes full of light," the first syllable being connected, 
by its root, with words signifying sight, not with words 
signifying color. As far as I can trace the color perception 
of the Greeks, I find it all founded primarily on the degree 
of connection between color and light ; the most important 
fact to them in the color of red being its connection with 
fire and sunshine ; so that " purple " is, in its original 
sense, "fire-color," and the scarlet, or orange, of dawn, 
more than any other fire-color. I was long puzzled by 
Homer's calling the sea purple ; and misled into thinking 
he meant the color of cloud shadows on green sea ; whereas 
he really means the gleaming blaze of the waves under wide 
light. Aristotle's idea (partly true) is that light, subdued by 
blackness, becomes red ; and blackness, heated or lighted, 
also becomes red. Thus, a color may be called purple 
because it is light subdued (and so death is called "purple " 
or "shadowy" death) ; or else it may be called purple as 
being shade kindled with fire, and thus said of the lighted 
sea ; or even of the sun itself, when it is thought of as a 
red luminary opposed to the whiteness of the moon : " pur- 
pureos inter soles, et Candida lunae sidera " ; or of golden 
hair: "pro purpureo poenam solvens scelerata capillo"; 



35§ THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

while both ideas are modified by the influence of an earlier 
form of the word, which has nothing to do with fire at all, 
but only with mixing or staining ; and then, to make the 
whole group of thoughts inextricably complex, yet rich and 
subtle in proportion to their intricacy, the various rose and 
crimson colors of the murexdye, — the crimson and purple 
of the poppy, and fruit of the palm, — and the association 
of all these with the hue of blood ; — partly direct, partly 
through a confusion between the word signifying "slaughter" 
and "palm-fruit color," mingle themselves in, and renew the 
whole nature of the old word ; so that, in later literature, 
it means a different color, or emotion of color, in almost 
every place where it occurs ; and casts forever around the 
reflection of all that has been dipped in its dyes. 

92. So that the word is really a liquid prism, and stream 
of opal. And then, last of all, to keep the whole history of 
it in the fantastic course of a dream, warped here and there 
into wild grotesque, we moderns, who have preferred to rule 
over coal-mines instead of the sea (and so have turned the 
everlasting lamp of Athena into a Davy's safety-lamp in the 
hand of Britannia, and Athenian heavenly lightning into 
British subterranean " damp "), have actually got our purple 
out of coal instead of the sea ! And thus, grotesquely, 
we have had enforced on us the doubt that held the old 
word between blackness and fire, and have completed the 
shadow, and the fear of it, by giving it a name from battle, 
" Magenta." 

93. There is precisely a similar confusion between light 
and color in the word used for the blue of the eyes of 
Athena — a noble confusion, however, brought about by, the 
intensity of the Greek sense that the heaven is light, more 
than that it is blue. I was not thinking of this when I 
wrote, in speaking of pictorial chiaroscuro, " The sky is not 
blue color merely ; it is blue fire, and cannot be painted " 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 359 

(" Modem Painters," IV. p. 36) ; but it was this that the 
Greeks chiefly felt of it, and so " Glaukopis " chiefly means 
gray-eyed : gray standing for a pale or luminous blue ; but 
it only means " owl-eyed " in thought of the roundness and 
expansion, not from the color ; this breadth and brightness 
being, again, in their moral sense typical of the breadth, 
intensity, and singleness of the sight in prudence (" if thine 
eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light "). Then 
the actual power of the bird to see in twilight enters into the 
type, and perhaps its general fineness of sense. " Before 
the human form was adopted, her (Athena's) proper symbol 
was the owl, a bird which seems to surpass all other creat- 
ures in acuteness of organic perception, its eye being calcu- 
lated to observe objects which to all others are enveloped in 
darkness, its ear to hear sounds distinctly, and its nostrils 
to discriminate effluvia with such nicety that it has been 
deemed prophetic, from discovering the putridity of death 
even in the first stages of disease." l 

I cannot find anywhere an account of the first known 
occurrence of the type ; but, in the early ones on Attic 
coins, the wide round eyes are clearly the principal things 
to be made manifest. 

94. There is yet, however, another color of great impor- 
tance in the conception of Athena — the dark blue of her 
aegis. Just as the blue or gray of her eyes was conceived 
as more light than color, so her aegis was dark blue, because 
the Greeks thought of this tint more as shade than color, 
and, while they used various materials in ornamentation, 
lapislazuli, carbonate of copper, or perhaps, smalt, with real 
enjoyment of the blue tint, it was yet in their minds as 
distinctly representative of darkness as scarlet was of light, 

1 Payne Knight in his Inquiry into the Symbolical Language of 
Ancient Art, not trustworthy, being little more than a mass of con- 
jectural memoranda, but the heap is suggestive, if well sifted. 



360 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

and, therefore, anything dark, 1 but especially the color of 
heavy thunder-cloud, was described by the same term. The 
physical power of this darkness of the aegis, fringed with 
lightning, is given quite simply when Jupiter himself uses it 

1 In the breastplate and shield of Atrides the serpents and bosses are 
all of this dark color, yet the serpents are said to be like rainbows; but 
through all this splendor and opposition of hue, I feel distinctly that the 
literal " splendor," with its relative shade, are prevalent in the concep- 
tion ; and that there is always a tendency to look through the hue to its 
cause. And in this feeling about color the Greeks are separated from 
the eastern nations, and from the best designers of Christian times. I 
cannot find that they take pleasure in color for its own sake ; it may be 
in something more than color, or better ; but it is not in the hue itself. 
When Homer describes cloud breaking from a mountain summit, the 
crags became visible in light, not in color ; he feels only their flashing 
out in bright edges and trenchant shadows: above, the "infinite," 
"unspeakable" ether is torn open — -but not the blue of it. He has 
scarcely any abstract pleasure in blue, or green, or gold ; but only in 
their shade or flame. 

I have yet to trace the causes of this (which will be a long task, 
belonging to art questions, not to mythological ones); but it is, I 
believe, much connected with the brooding of the shadow of death over 
the Greeks without any clear hope of immortality. The restriction of 
the color on their vases to dim red (or yellow) with black and white, is 
greatly connected with their sepulchral use, and with all the melancholy 
of Greek tragic thought ; and in this gloom the failure of color-percep- 
tion is partly noble, partly base : noble, in its earnestness, which raises 
the design of Greek vases as far above the designing of mere colorist 
nations like the Chinese, as men's thoughts are above children's ; # and 
yet it is partly base and earthly ; and inherently defective in one human 
faculty : and I believe it was one cause of the perishing of their art so 
swiftly, for indeed there is no decline so sudden, or down to such utter 
loss and ludicrous depravity, as the fall of Greek design on its vases 
from the fifth to the third century, B.C. On the other hand, the pure 
colored-gift, when employed for pleasure only, degrades in another 
direction ; so that among the Indians, Chinese, and Japanese, all intel- 
lectual progress in art has been for ages rendered impossible by the 
prevalence of that faculty : and yet it is, as I have said again and 
again, the spiritual power of art ; and its true brightness is the essential 
characteristic of all healthy schools. 



ATHENA IX THE EARTH. 36 1 

to overshadow Ida and the Plain of Troy, and withdraws it 
at the prayer of Ajax for light ; and again when he grants 
it to be worn for a time by Apollo, who is hidden by its 
cloud when he strikes down Patroclus : but its spiritual 
power is chiefly expressed by a word signifying deeper 
shadow; — the gloom of Erebus, or of our evening, which, 
when spoken of the aegis, signifies, not merely the indigna- 
tion of Athena, but the entire hiding or withdrawal of her 
help, and beyond even this, her deadliest of all hostility, 
— the darkness by which she herself deceives and beguiles 
to final ruin those to whom she is wholly adverse ; this 
contradiction of her own glory being the uttermost judg- 
ment upon human falsehood. Thus it is she who provokes 
Pandarus to the treachery which purposed to fulfill the rape 
of Helen by the murder of her husband in time of truce ; 
and then the Greek King, holding his wounded brother's 
hand, prophesies against Troy the darkness of the aegis 
which shall be over all, and forever. 1 

95. This, then, finally, was the perfect color-conception 
of Athena ; ■ — the flesh, snow-white (the hands, feet, and 
face of marble, even when the statue was hewn roughly in 
wood); the eyes of keen pale blue, often in statues repre- 
sented by jewels ; the long robe to the feet, crocus-colored ; 
and the aegis thrown over it of thunderous purple ; the 
helmet golden ("Iliad," V. 744), and I suppose its crest 
also, as that of Achilles. 

If you think carefully of the meaning and character which 
is now enough illustrated for you in each of these colors ; 
and remember that the crocus-color and the purple were 
both of them developments, in opposite directions, of the 
great central idea of fire-color, or scarlet, you will see that 
this form of the creative spirit of the earth is conceived as 
robed in the blue, and purple, and scarlet, the white, and 

1 ip€fj.vr}u Aiyloa iracn. — Iliad, IV. 166. 



362 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the gold, which have been recognized for the sacred chord 
of colors, from the day when the cloud descended on a Rock 
more mighty than Ida. 

96. I have spoken throughout, hitherto, of the concep- 
tion of Athena, as it is traceable in the Greek mind ; not 
as it was rendered by Greek art. It is matter of extreme 
difficulty, requiring a sympathy at once affectionate and 
cautious, and a knowledge reaching the earliest springs of 
the religion of many lands, to discern through the imper- 
fection, and, alas! more dimly yet, through the triumphs 
of formative art, what kind of thoughts they were that 
appointed for it the tasks of its childhood, and watched by 
the awakening of its strength. 

The religious passion is nearly always vividest when the 
art is weakest ; and the technical skill only reaches its 
deliberate splendor when the ecstasy which gave it birth 
has passed away forever. It is as vain an attempt to 
reason out the visionary power or guiding influence of 
Athena in the Greek heart, from anything we now read, 
or possess, of the work of Phidias, as it would be for the 
disciples of some new religion to infer the spirit of Chris- 
tianity from Titian's "Assumption." The effective vitality 
of the religious conception can be traced only through the 
efforts of trembling hands, and strange pleasures of un- 
taught eyes ; and the beauty of the dream can no more be 
found in the first symbols by which it is expressed, than a 
child's idea of fairyland can be gathered from its pencil 
scrawl, or a girl's love for her broken doll explained by the 
defaced features. On the other hand, the Athena of Phidias 
was, in very fact, not so much the deity, as the darling of 
the Athenian people. Her magnificence represented their 
pride and fondness, more than their piety ; and the great 
artist, in lavishing upon her dignities which might be ended 
abruptly by the pillage they provoked, resigned, apparently 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH. 363 

without regret, the awe of her ancient memory ; and (with 
only the careless remonstrance of a workman too strong to 
be proud,) even the perfectness of his own art. Rejoicing 
in the protection of their goddess, and in their own hour of 
glory, the people of Athena robed her, at their will, with the 
preciousness of ivory and gems ; forgot or denied the dark- 
ness of the breastplate of judgment, and vainly bade its 
unappeasable serpents relax their coils in gold. 

97. It will take me many a day yet — if days, many or 
few, are given me — to disentangle in any wise the proud 
and practiced disguises of religious creeds from the in- 
stinctive arts which, grotesquely and indecorously, yet with 
sincerity, strove to embody them, or to relate. But I think 
the reader, by help even of the imperfect indications already 
given to him, will be able to follow, with a continually in- 
creasing security, the vestiges of the Myth of Athena; and 
to reanimate its almost evanescent shade, by connecting it 
with the now recognized facts of existent nature, which it, 
more or less dimly, reflected and foretold. I gather these 
facts together in brief sum. 

98. The deep of air that surrounds the earth enters into 
union with the earth at its surface, and with its waters ; 
so as to be the apparent cause of their ascending into life. 
First, it warms them, and shades, at once, staying the heat 
of the sun's rays in its own body, but warding their force 
with its clouds. It warms and cools at once, with traffic 
of balm and frost ; so that the white wreaths are with- 
drawn from the field of the Swiss peasant by the glow of 
Libyan rock. It gives its own strength to the sea ; forms 
and fills every cell of its foam ; sustains the precipices, 
and designs the valleys of its waves ; gives the gleam to 
their moving under the night, and the white fire to their 
plains under sunrise ; lifts their voices along the rocks, 
bears above them the spray of birds, pencils through them 



364 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the dimpling of unfooted sands. It gathers out of them a 
portion in the hollow of its hand ; dyes, with that, the 
hills into dark blue, and their glaciers with dying rose ; 
inlays with that, for sapphire, the dome in which it has to 
set the cloud ; shapes out of that the heavenly flocks ; 
divides them, numbers, cherishes, bears them on its bosom, 
calls them to their journeys, waits by their rest ; feeds 
from them the brooks that cease not, and strews with them 
the dews that cease. It spins and weaves their fleece into 
wild tapestry, rends it, and renews ; and flits and flames, 
and whispers, among the golden threads, thrilling them 
with a plectrum of strange fire that traverses them to and 
fro, and is enclosed in them like life. 

It enters into the surface of the earth, subdues it, and. 
falls together with it into fruitful dust, from which can be 
moulded flesh ; it joins itself, in dew, to the substance of 
adamant; and becomes the green leaf out of the dry ground; 
it enters into the separated shapes of the earth it has 
tempered, commands the ebb and flow of the current of 
their life, fills their limbs with its own lightness, measures 
their existence by its indwelling pulse, moulds upon their 
lips the words by which one soul can be known to another ; 
is to them the hearing of the ear, and the beating of the 
heart ; and, passing away, leaves them to the peace that 
hears and moves no more. 

99. This was the Athena of the greatest people of the 
days of old. And opposite to the temple of this Spirit 
of the breath, and life-blood, of man and of beast, stood, 
on the Mount of Justice, and near the chasm which was 
haunted by the goddess- Avengers, an altar to a God 
unknown ; — proclaimed at last to them, as one who, indeed, 
gave to all men life, and breath, and all things ; and rain 
from heaven, filling their hearts with food and gladness ; 
— a God who had made of one blood all nations of men 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 365 

who dwell on the face of all the earth, and had determined 
the times of their fate, and the bounds of their habitation. 

100. We ourselves, fretted here in our narrow days, 
know less, perhaps, in very deed, than they, what manner 
of spirit we are of, or what manner of spirit we ignorantly 
worship. Have we, indeed, desired the Desire of all 
nations ? And will the Master whom we meant to seek, 
and the Messenger in whom we thought we delighted, 
confirm, when He comes to his Temple, — or not find in its 
midst, — the tables heavy with gold for bread, and the seats 
that are bought with the price of the dove ? Or is our own 
land also to be left by its angered Spirit ; — left among 
those, where sunshine vainly sweet, and passionate folly 
of storm, waste themselves in the silent places of knowledge 
that has passed away, and of tongues that have ceased ? 

This only we may discern assuredly: this, every true light 
of science, every mercifully-granted power, every wisely- 
restricted thought, teach us more clearly day by day, that 
in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, there is one 
continual and omnipotent presence of help, and of peace, 
for all men who know that they Live, and remember that 
they Die. 

III. ATHENA ERGANE. 1 

ATHENA IN THE HEART. 

Various Notes relating to the Conception of Athena as the Directress oj 
the Imagination and Will. 

101. I have now only a few words to say, bearing on 
what seems to me present need, respecting the third func- 
tion of Athena, conceived as the directress of human passion, 
resolution, and labor. 

1 "Athena the worker, or having rule over work." The name was 
first given to her by the Athenians. 



366 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Few words, for I am not yet prepared to give accurate 
distinction between the intellectual rule of Athena and that 
of the Muses ; but, broadly, the Muses, with their king, 
preside over meditative, historical, and poetic arts, whose 
end is the discovery of light or truth, and the creation of 
beauty ; but Athena rules over moral passion, and practi- 
cally useful art. She does not make men learned, but 
prudent and subtle ; she does not teach them to make their 
work beautiful, but to make it right. 

In different places of my writings, and through many 
years of endeavor to define the laws of art, I have insisted 
on this rightness in work, and on its connection with virtue 
of character, in so many partial ways, that the impression 
left on the reader's mind — if, indeed, it was ever impressed 
at all — has been confused and uncertain. In beginning 
the series of my corrected works, I wish this principle (in 
my own mind the foundation of every other) to be made 
plain, if nothing else is ; and will try, therefore, to make it 
so, so far as, by any effort, I can put it into unmistakable 
words. And, first, here is a very simple statement of it, 
given lately in a lecture on the Architecture of the Valley 
of the Sorame, which will be better read in this place than 
in its incidental connection with my account of the porches 
of Abbeville. 

1 02. I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the 
expression, "by what faults " this Gothic architecture fell. 
We continually speak thus of works of art. We talk of 
their faults and merits, as of virtues and vices. What do 
we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the merits 
of a piece of stone ? 

The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, 
and its virtues his virtues. 

Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, 
and mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak man. A 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 367 

foolish person builds foolishly, and a wise one sensibly ; a 
virtuous one, beautifully ; and a vicious one, basely. If 
stone work is well put together, it means that a thoughtful 
man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an honest 
man cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means 
that its carver was too greedy of pleasure ; if too little that 
he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, and the like. So that 
when once you have learned how to spell these most precious 
of all legends, — pictures and buildings, — you may read 
the characters of men, and of nations, in their art, as in a 
mirror : — nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a hundred- 
fold ; for the character becomes passionate in the art, and 
intensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. Nay, 
not only as in a microscope, but as under a scalpel, and in 
dissection ; for a man may hide himself from you, or mis- 
represent himself to you, every other way ; but he cannot 
in his work : there, be sure, you have him to the inmost. 
All that he likes, all that he sees, — all that he can do, — 
his imagination, his affections, his perseverance, his impa- 
tience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If 
the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider ; 
if a honeycomb, by a bee ; a worm-cast is thrown up by a 
worm, and a nest wreathed by a bird ; and a house built by 
a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and ignobly, if he is ignoble. 

And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made 
thing is good or bad, so is the maker of it. 

103. You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, 
whether you theoretically admit the principle or not. Take 
that floral gable ; * you don't suppose the man who built 
Stonehenge could have built that, or that the man who 
built that, would have built Stonehenge ? Do you think an 

1 The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west end of 
Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, and 
enriched with a border of " twisted eglantine." 



368 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work ? 
or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting 
these stems of roses in and out ? Or, of modern handi- 
craftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pick- 
pocket could have carved it ? Could Bill Sykes have done 
it ? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool ? You 
will find in the end, that no man could have done it but 
exactly the man who did it; and by looking close at it, you 
may, if you know your letters, read precisely the manner of 
man he was. 

104. Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave 
reason. Of all facts concerning art, this is the one most 
necessary to be known, that, while manufacture is the work 
of hands only, art is the work of the whole spirit of man ; 
and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it : and by whatever 
power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice 
or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is born of 
evil begets evil ; and that which is born of valor and honor, 
teaches valor and honor. All art is either infection or 
education. It must be one or other of these. 

105. This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one 
of which understanding is the most precious, and denial 
the most deadly. And I assert it the more, because it has 
of late been repeatedly, expressly, and with contumely, 
denied ; and that by high authority : and I hold it one of 
the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the 
arts among us, that English gendemen, of high standing as 
scholars and artists, should have been blinded into the 
acceptance, and betrayed into the assertion of a fallacy 
which only authority such as theirs could have rendered for 
an instant credible. For the contrary of it is written in the 
history of all great nations ; it is the one sentence always 
inscribed on the steps of their thrones ; the one concordant 
voice in which they speak to us out of their dust. 



ATHENA IX THE HEART. 369 

All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and 
beautiful animal race, with intense energy and imagination. 
They live lives of hardship by choice, and by grand instinct 
of manly discipline : they become fierce and irresistible 
soldiers ; the nation is always its own army, and their king, 
or chief head of government, is always their first soldier. 
Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, 
or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis or Dandolo, or Frederick the 
Great : — Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, 
French, Venetian, — that is inviolable law for them all ; 
their king must be their first soldier, or they cannot be in 
progressive power. Then, after their great military period, 
comes the domestic period ; in which, without betraying the 
discipline of war, they add to their great soldiership the 
delights and possessions of a delicate and tender home- 
life : and then, for all nations, is the time of their perfect 
art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of their 
national ideal of character, developed by the finished care 
of the occupations of peace. That is the history of all 
true art that ever was, or can be : palpably the history of 
it, — unmistakably, — written on the forehead of it in 
letters of light, — in tongues of fire, by which the seal of 
virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into a convict's 
flesh the seal of crime. But always, hitherto, after the 
great period, has followed the day of luxury, and pursuit 
of the arts for pleasure only. And all has so ended. 

106. Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here 
asserted two things, — first, the foundation of art in moral 
character ; next, the foundation of moral character in war. 
I must make both these assertions clearer, and prove them. 

First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of 
course art-gift and amiability of disposition are two different 
things. A good man is not necessarily a painter, nor does 
an eye for color necessarily imply an honest mind. But 



370 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

great art implies the union of both powers : it is the 
expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is not 
there, we can have no art at all ; and if the soul — and a 
right soul too — is not there, the art is bad, however 
dexterous. 

107. But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only 
the result of the moral character of generations. A bad 
woman may have a sweet voice ; but that sweetness of 
voice comes of the past morality of her race. That she 
can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of laws 
of music by the morality of the past. Every act, every 
impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, 
voice, nervous power, and vigor and harmony of invention, 
at once. Perseverance in rightness of human conduct, 
renders, after a certain number of generations, human 
art possible ; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little a one ; 
and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure 
render, after a certain number of generations, all art impos- 
sible. Men are deceived by the long-suffering of the laws 
of nature ; and mistake, in a nation, the reward of the 
virtue of its sires for the issue of its own sins. The time 
of their visitation will come, and that inevitably ; for, it is 
always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the 
children's teeth are set on edge. And for the individual, 
as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I said, 
know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his 
art-gift be never so great, and cultivated to the height by 
the schools of a great race of men ; and it is still but a 
tapestry thrown over his own being and inner soul ; and the 
bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on a 
man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you may not 
see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but learn 
how to look, and the folds themselves will become trans- 
parent, and you shall see through them the death's shape, 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 37 1 

or the divine one, making the tissue above it as a cloud of 
light, or as a winding-sheet. 

1 08. Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will 
find it true, and that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art 
is rooted in virtue, so it bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic 
in its own nature. It is often didactic also in actually 
expressed thought, as Giotto's, Michael Angelo's, Durer's, 
and hundreds more ; but that is not its special function, — 
it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful; but beautiful with 
haunting thought, no less than with form, and full of myths 
that can be read only with the heart. 

For instance, at this moment there is open beside me as 
I write, a page of Persian manuscript, wrought with wreathed 
azure and gold, and soft green, and violet, and ruby, and 
scarlet, into one field of pure resplendence. It is wrought 
to delight the eyes only ; and does delight them ; and the 
man wh© did it assuredly had eyes in his head ; but not 
much more. It is not didactic art, but its author was happy : 
and it will do the good, and the harm, that mere pleasure 
can do. But, opposite me, is an early Turner drawing of 
the lake of Geneva, taken about two miles from Geneva, on 
the Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in the distance. The 
old city is seen lying beyond the waveless waters, veiled 
with a sweet misty veil of Athena's weaving : a faint light 
of morning, peaceful exceedingly, and almost colorless, 
shed from behind the Voirons, increases into soft amber 
along the slope of the Saleve, and is just seen, and no 
more, on the fair warm fields of its summit, between the 
folds of a white cloud that rests upon the grass, but rises, 
high and tower-like, into the zenith of dawn above. 

109. There is not as much color in that low amber light 
upon the hill-side as there is in the palest dead leaf. The 
lake is not blue, but gray in mist, passing into deep shadow 
beneath the Voirons' pines ; a few dark clusters of leaves, 



372 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

a single white flower — scarcely seen — are all the gladness 
given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby spots of 
the eastern manuscript would give color enough for all the 
red that is in Turner's entire drawing. For the mere 
pleasure of the eye, there is not so much in all those lines 
of his, throughout the entire landscape, as in half an inch 
square of the Persian's page. What made him take pleasure 
in the low color that is only like the brown of a dead leaf ? 
in the cold gray of dawn — in the one white flower among 
the rocks — in these — and no more than these ? 

no, He took pleasure in them because he had been 
bred among English fields and hills ; because the gentleness 
of a great race was in his heart, and its powers of thought 
in his brain ; because he knew the stories of the Alps, and 
of the cities at their feet ; because he had read the Homeric 
legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and 
the givers of dew to the fields ; because he knew the faces 
of the crags, and the imagery of the passionate mountains, 
as a man knows the face of his friend ; because he had in 
him the wonder and sorrow concerning life and death, which 
are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the days of its 
first sea kings ; and also the compassion and the joy that 
are woven into the innermost fabric of every great imagina- 
tive spirit, born now in countries that have lived by the 
Christian faith with any courage or truth. And the picture 
contains also, for us, just this which its maker had in him 
to give ; and can convey it to us, just so far as we are of 
the temper in which it must be received. It is didactic if 
we are worthy to be taught, no otherwise. The pure heart, 
it will make more pure ; the thoughtful, more thoughtful. 
It has in it no words for the reckless or the base. 

in. As I myself look at it, there is no fault nor folly of 
my life, — and both have been many and great, — that does 
not rise up against me, and take away my joy, and shorten 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 373 

my power of possession, of sight, of understanding. And 
every past effort of my life, every gleam of Tightness or good 
in it. is with me now, to help me in my grasp of this art, and 
its vision. So far as I can rejoice in, or interpret either, my 
power is owing to what of right there is in me. 1 dare to 
say it, that, because through all my life I have desired good, 
and not evil ; because I have been kind to many ; have 
wished to be kind to all ; have willfully injured none ; and 
because I have loved much, and not selfishly; — therefore, 
the morning light is yet visible to me on those hills, and 
you, who read, may trust my thought and word in such work 
as I have to do for you ; and you will be glad afterwards 
that you have trusted them. 

112. Yet remember, — I repeat it again and yet again, — 
that I may for once, if possible, make this thing assuredly 
clear : — the inherited art-gift must be there, as well as the 
life in some poor measure, or rescued fragment, right. 
This art-gift of mine could not have been won by any work, 
or by any conduct : it belongs to me by birthright, and came 
by Athena's will, from the air of English country villages, 
and Scottish hills. I will risk whatever charge of folly may 
come on me, for printing one of my many childish rhymes, 
written on a frosty day in Glen Farg, just north of Loch 
Leven. It bears date ist January, 1828. I was born on 
the 8th of February, 18 19 ; and all that I ever could be, and 
all that I cannot be, the weak little rhyme already shows : — 

" Papa, how pretty those icicles are, 
That are seen so near, — that are seen so far ; 
— Those dropping waters that come from the rocks 
And many a hole, like the haunt of a fox. 
That silvery stream that runs babbling along, 
Making a murmuring, dancing song. 
Those trees that stand waving upon the rock's side, 
And men, that, like spectres, among them glide. 



374 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

And waterfalls that are heard from far, 

And come in sight when very near. 

And the water-wheel that turns slowly round, 

Grinding the corn that — requires to be ground, — 

(Political Economy of the future !) 

And mountains at a distance seen, 

And rivers winding through the plain. 
And quarries with their craggy stones, 
And the wind among them moans." 

So foretelling " Stones of Venice," and this essay on Athena. 
Enough now concerning myself. 

113. Of Turner's life, and of its good and evil, both great, 
but the good immeasurably the greater, his work is in all 
things a perfect and transparent evidence. His biography 
is simply,- — "He did this, nor will ever another do its like 
again." Yet read what I have said of him, as compared 
with the great Italians, in the passages taken from the 
"Cestus of Aglaia," farther on, § 158, p. 412. 

114. This then is the nature of the connection of morals 
with art. Now, secondly, I have asserted the foundation of 
both these, at least, hitherto, in war. The reason of this 
too manifest fact is, that, until now, it has been impossible 
for any nation, except a warrior one, to fix its mind wholly 
on its men, instead of on their possessions. Every great 
soldier nation thinks, necessarily, first of multiplying its 
bodies and souls of men, in good temper and strict discipline. 
As long as this is its political aim, it does not matter what 
it temporarily suffers, or loses, either in numbers or in 
wealth ; its morality and its arts (if it have national art-gift) 
advance together ; but so soon as it ceases to be a warrior 
nation, it thinks of its possessions instead of its men ; and 
then the moral and poetic powers vanish together. 

115. It is thus, however, absolutely necessary to the virtue 
of war that it should be waged by personal strength, not by 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 375 

money or machinery. A nation that fights with a mercenary 
force, or with torpedoes instead of its own arms, is dying. 
Not but that there is more true courage in modern than even 
in ancient war; but this is, first, because all the remaining life 
of European nations is with a morbid intensity thrown into 
their soldiers; and, secondly, because their present heroism is 
the culmination of centuries of inbred and traditional valor, 
which Athena taught them by forcing them to govern the foam 
of the sea-wave and of the horse, — not the steam of kettles. 
1 1 6. And farther, note this, which is vital to us in the 
present crisis : If war is to be made by money and machinery, 
the nation which is the largest and most covetous multitude 
will win. You may be as scientific as you choose ; the mob 
that can pay more for sulphuric acid and gun-powder will 
at last poison its bullets, throw acid in your faces, and make 
an end of you ; — of itself, also, in good time, but of you 
first. And to the English people the choice of its fate is 
very near now. It may spasmodically defend its property 
with iron walls a fathom thick, a few years longer — a very 
few. No walls will defend either it, or its havings, against 
the multitude that is breeding and spreading, faster than the 
clouds, over the habitable earth. We shall be allowed to 
live by small peddler's business, and ironmongery- — since we 
have chosen those for our line of life ■ — as long as we are 
found useful black servants to the Americans ; and are con- 
tent to dig coals and sit in the cinders ; and have still coals 
to dig, — they once exhausted, or got cheaper elsewhere, we 
shall be abolished, But if we think more wisely, while there 
is yet time, and set our minds again on multiplying English- 
men, and not on cheapening English wares ; if we resolve to 
submit to wholesome laws of labor and economy, and, setting 
our political squabbles aside, try how many strong creatures, 
friendly and faithful to each other, we can crowd into every 
spot of English dominion, neither poison nor iron will prevail 



376 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

against us; nor traffic — nor hatred: the noble nation will 
yet by the grace of Heaven, rule over the ignoble, and 
force of heart hold its own against fire-balls. 

117. But there is yet a farther reason for the dependence 
of the arts on war. The vice and injustice of the world are 
constantly springing anew, and are only to be subdued by 
battle ; the keepers of order and law must always be sol- 
diers. And now, going back to the myth of Athena, we see 
that though she is first a warrior maid, she detests war for 
its own sake; she arms Achilles and Ulysses in just quar- 
rels, but she disarms Ares. She contends, herself, continu- 
ally against disorder and convulsion, in the Earth giants ; 
she stands by Hercules' side in victory over all monstrous 
evil : in justice only she judges and makes war. But in this 
war of hers she is wholly implacable. She has little notion 
of converting criminals. There is no faculty of mercy in 
her when she has been resisted. Her word is only, " I will 
mock when your fear cometh." Note the words that follow: 
"when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction 
as a whirlwind "; 1 for her wrath is of irresistible tempest: 
once roused, it is blind and deaf, — rabies — madness of 
anger — darkness of the Dies Irae. 

And that is, indeed, the sorrowfullest fact we have to 
know about our own several lives. Wisdom never forgives. 
Whatever resistance we have offered to her law, she avenges 
forever; — the lost hour can never be redeemed, and the 
accomplished wrong never atoned for. The best that can 
be done afterwards, but for that, had been better; — the 
falsest of all the cries of peace, where there is no peace, is 
that of the pardon of sin, as the mob expect it. Wisdom 
can "put away" sin, but she cannot pardon it; and she is 
apt, in her haste, to put away the sinner as well, when the 
black aegis is on her breast. 

1 Troverbs i. 26, 27. 



ATHENA l\ 1111 HEART. 377 

nS. And this is also a. fact we have to know about our 
national life-, that it is ended as soon as it has lost the power 
of noble Anger. When it paints over, and apologizes for its 
pitiful criminalities ; and endures its false weights, and its 
adulterated food; — dares not to decide practically between 
good and evil, and can neither honor the one, nor smite the 
other, but sneers at the good, as if it were hidden evil, and 
consoles the evil with pious sympathy, and conserves it in 
the sugar of its leaden heart, — the end is come. 

119. The first sign, then, of Athena's presence with any 
people, is that they become warriors, and that the chief 
thought of every man of them is to stand rightly in his rank, 
and not fail from his brother's side in battle. Wealth, 
and pleasure, and even love, are all, under Athena's orders, 
sacrificed to this duty of standing fast in the rank of war. 

But farther : Athena presides over industry, as well as 
battle ; typically, over women's industry ; that brings com- 
fort with pleasantness. Her word to us all is: — "Be well 
exercised, and rightly clothed. Clothed, and in your right 
minds ; not insane and in rags, nor in soiled fine clothes 
clutched from each other's shoulders. Fight and weave. 
Then I myself will answer for the course of the lance, and 
the colors of the loom.'' 

And now I will ask the reader to look with some care 
through these following passages respecting modern multi- 
tudes and their occupations, written long ago, but left in 
fragmentary form, in which they must now stay, and be of 
what use they can. 

120. It is not political economy to put a number of 
strong men down on an acre of ground, with no lodging, 
and nothing to eat. Nor is it political economy to build a 
city on good ground, and fill it with store of corn and 
treasure, and put a score of lepers to live in it. Political 
economy creates together the means of life, and the living 



378 THE QUEEN OF TPIE AIR. 

persons who are to use them ; and of both, the best and the 
most that it can, but imperatively the best, not the most. A 
few good and healthy men, rather than a multitude of dis- 
eased rogues ; and a little real milk and wine, rather than 
much chalk and petroleum ; but the gist of the whole 
business is that the men and their property must both be 
produced together — not one to the loss of the other. 
Property must not be created in lands desolate by exile of 
their people, nor multiplied and depraved humanity in lands 
barren of bread. 

121. Nevertheless, though the men and their possessions 
are to be increased at the same time, the first object of 
thought is always to be the multiplication of a worthy 
people. The strength of the nation is in its multitude, not 
in its territory ; but only in its sound multitude. It is one 
thing, both in a man and a nation, to gain flesh, and another 
to be swollen with putrid humors. Not that multitude ever 
ought to be inconsistent with virtue. Two men should be 
wiser than one, and two thousand than two; nor do I know 
another so gross fallacy in the records of human stupidity as 
that excuse for neglect of crime by greatness of cities. As 
if the first purpose of congregation were not to devise laws 
and repress crimes ! as if bees and wasps could live honestly 
in flocks, — men, only in separate dens! — as if it was easy 
to help one another on the opposite sides of a mountain, and 
impossible on the opposite sides of a street ! But when the 
men are true and good, and stand shoulder to shoulder, the 
strength of any nation is in its quantity of life, not in its land 
nor gold. The more good men a state has, in proportion to 
its territory, the stronger the state. And as it has been the 
madness of economists to seek for gold instead of life, so it 
has been the madness of kings to seek for land instead of 
life. They want the town on the other side of the river, and 
seek it at the spear point : it never enters their stupid heads 



ATHENA IX THE HEART. 379 

that to double the honest souls in the town on this side of 
the river, would make them stronger kings ; and that this 
doubling might be done by the ploughshare instead of the 
spear, and through happiness instead of misery. 

Therefore, in brief, this is the object of all true policy 
and true economy: "utmost multitude of good men on 
every given space of ground" — imperatively always, good, 
sound, honest men, not a mob of white-faced thieves. So 
that, on the one hand, all aristocracy is wrong which is 
inconsistent with numbers ; and, on the other, all numbers 
are wrong which are inconsistent with breeding. 

122. Then, touching the accumulation of wealth for the 
maintenance of such men, observe, that you must never use 
the terms "money" and "wealth" as synonymous. Wealth 
consists of the good, and therefore useful, things in the 
possession of the nation : money is only the written or 
coined sign of the relative qualities of wealth in each 
person's possession. All money is a divisible title-deed, 
of immense importance as an expression of right to prop- 
erty ; but absolutely valueless, as property itself. Thus, 
supposing a nation isolated from all others, the money in its 
possession is, at its maximum value, worth all the property 
of the nation, and no more, because no more can be got 
for it. And the money of all nations is worth, at its maxi- 
mum, the property of all nations, and no more, for no more 
can be got for it. Thus, every article of property produced 
increases, by its value, the value of all the money in the 
world, and every article of property destroyed, diminishes 
the value of all the money in the world. If ten men are 
cast away on a rock, with a thousand pounds in their 
pockets, and there is on the rock neither food nor shelter, 
their money is worth simply nothing ; for nothing is to be 
had for it : if they build ten huts, and recover a cask of 
biscuit from the wreck, then their thousand pounds, at its 



380 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

maximum value, is worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit. 
If they make their thousand pounds into two thousand by 
writing new notes, their two thousand pounds are still only 
worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit. And the law of 
relative value is the same for all the world, and all the 
people in it, and all their property, as for ten men on a 
rock. Therefore, money is truly and finally lost in the 
degree in which its value is taken from it (ceasing in 
that degree to be money at all) ; and it is truly gained in 
the degree in which value is added to it. Thus, suppose 
the money coined by the nation to be a fixed sum, divided 
very minutely (say into francs and cents), and neither to be 
added to, nor diminished. Then every grain of food and 
inch of lodging added to its possessions makes every cent 
in its pockets worth proportionally more, and every grain of 
food it consumes, and inch of roof it allows to fall to ruin, 
makes every cent in its pockets worth less ; and this with 
mathematical precision. The immediate value of the money 
at particular times and places depends, indeed, on the 
humors of the possessors of property ; but the nation is in 
the one case gradually getting richer ; and will feel the 
pressure of poverty steadily everywhere relaxing, whatever 
the humors of individuals may be ; and, in the other case, 
is gradually growing poorer, and the pressure of its poverty 
will every day tell more and more, in ways that it cannot 
explain, but will most bitterly feel. 

123. The actual quantity of money which it coins, in 
relation to its real property, is therefore only of conse- 
quence for convenience of exchange ; but the proportion 
in which this quantity of money is divided among indi- 
viduals expresses their various rights to greater or less 
proportions of the national property, and must not, there- 
fore, be tampered with. The Government may at any time, 
with perfect justice, double its issue of coinage, if it gives 



ATHENA f.\ THE HEART. 38 1 

ever)' man who had ten pounds in his pocket, another ten 
pounds, and every man who had ten pence, another ten 
pence ; for it thus does not make any of them richer ; it 
merely divides their counters for them into twice the 
number. But if it gives the newly-issued coins to other 
people, or keeps them itself, it simply robs the former 
holders to precisely that extent. This most important 
function of money, as a title-deed, on the non-violation of 
which all national soundness of commerce and peace of life 
depend, has been never rightly distinguished by economists 
from the quite unimportant function of money as a means 
of exchange. You can exchange goods, — ■ at some incon- 
venience, indeed, but still you can contrive to do it, — 
without money at all ; but you cannot maintain your claim 
to the savings of your past life without a document declar- 
ing the amount of them, which the nation and its Govern- 
ment will respect. 

124. And as economists have lost sight of this great 
function of money in relation to individual rights, so they 
have equally lost sight of its function as a representative 
of good things. That, for every good thing produced, so 
much money is put into everybody's pocket — is the one 
simple and primal truth for the public to know and for 
economists to teach. How many of them have taught it ? 
Some have ; but only incidentally ; and others will say it is 
a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does your 
ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner 
he gives has destroyed forever as much money as it is 
worth? Does every well-educated girl — do even the women 
in high political position — know that every fine dress they 
wear themselves, or cause to be worn, destroys precisely so 
much of the national money as the labor and material of it 
are worth? If this be a truism, it is one that needs pro- 
claiming somewhat louder. 



382 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

125. That, then, is the relation of money and goods. 
So much goods, so much money ; so little goods, so little 
money. But, as there is this true relation between money 
and "goods," or good things, so there is a false relation 
between money and "bads," or bad things. Many bad 
things will fetch a price in exchange ; but they do not 
increase the wealth of the country. Good wine is wealth 
— drugged wine is not ; good meat is wealth — putrid meat 
is not ; good pictures are wealth — bad pictures are not. 
A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you ; not what 
you choose to pay for it. You may pay a thousand pounds 
for a cracked pipkin, if you please ; but you do not by that 
transaction make the cracked pipkin worth* one that will 
hold water, nor that, nor any pipkin whatsoever, worth 
more than it was before you paid such sum for it. You 
may, perhaps, induce many potters to manufacture fissured 
potSj and many amateurs of clay to buy them ; but the 
nation is, through the whole business so encouraged, rich 
by the addition to its wealth of so many potsherds — and 
there an end. The thing is worth what it can do for you, 
not what you think it can ; and most national luxuries, now- 
a-days, are a form of potsherd, provided for the solace of a 
self-complacent Job, voluntary sedent on his ash-heap. 

126. And, also, so far as good things already exist, and 
have become media of exchange, the variations in their 
prices are absolutely indifferent to the nation. Whether Mr. 
A. buys a Titian from Mr. B. for twenty, or for two thou- 
sand, pounds, matters not sixpence to the national revenue : 
that is to say, it matters in nowise to the revenue whether 
Mr. A. has the picture, and Mr. B. the money, or Mr. B. the 
picture, and Mr. A. the money. Which of them will spend 
the money most wisely, and which of them will keep the picture 
most carefully, is, indeed, a matter of some importance ; 
but this cannot be known by the mere fact of exchange. 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 383 

127. The wealth of a nation then, first, and its peaee and 
well-being besides, depend on the number of persons it can 
employ in making good and useful things. I say its well- 
being also, for the character of men depends more on their 
occupations than on any teaching we can give them, or 
principles with which we can imbue them. The employ- 
ment forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the 
constitution of the man ; — the greater part of his moral or 
persistent nature, whatever effort, under special excitement, 
he may make to change, or overcome them. Employment 
is the half, and the primal half, of education — it is the 
warp of it ; and the fineness or the endurance of all subse- 
quently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness 
and strength. And, whatever difficulty there may be in 
tracing through past history the remoter connections of 
event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear : 
the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their 
employments, and the determination of their final fate by 
their character. The moment, and the first direction of 
decisive revolutions, often depend on accident ; but their 
persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly 
on the nature of the people. The passing of the Reform 
bill by the late English Parliament may have been more or 
less accidental : the results of the measure now rest on the 
character of the English people, as it has been developed 
by their recent interests, occupations, and habits of life. 
Whether, as a body, they employ their new powers for good 
or evil, will depend, not on their facilities of knowledge, nor 
even on the general intelligence they may possess ; but 
on the number of persons among them whom wholesome 
employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and 
modest in their estimate of the promises, of Life. 

128. But especially in framing laws respecting the treat- 
ment or employment of improvident and more or less vicious 



384 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

persons, it is to be remembered that as men are not made 
heroes by the performance of an act of heroism, but must 
be brave before they can perform it, so they are not made 
villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains 
before they committed it ; and that the right of public 
interference with their conduct begins when they begin to 
corrupt themselves ; — not merely at the moment when they 
have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt. 

All measures of reformation are effective in exact propor- 
tion to their timeliness : partial decay may be cut away and 
cleansed ; incipient error corrected : but there is a point at 
which corruption can no more be stayed, nor wandering 
recalled. It has been the manner of modern philanthropy 
to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave the 
sick to perish, and the foolish to stray, while it spent itself 
in frantic exertions to raise the dead, and reform the dust. 

The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion 
against capital punishment is, I trust, the sign of an awaken- 
ing perception that punishment is the last and worst instru- 
ment in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of 
crime. The true instruments of reformation are employment 
and reward; — not punishment. Aid the willing, honor the 
virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will 
be no need for the compelling of any into the great and last 
indolence of death. 

129. The beginning of all true reformation among the 
criminal classes depends on the establishment of institu- 
tions for their active employment, while their criminality 
is still unripe, and their feelings of self-respect, capacities 
of affection, and sense of justice, not altogether quenched. 
That those who are desirous of employment should always 
be able to find it, will hardly, at the present day, be dis- 
puted : but that those who are z^/desirous of employment 
should of all persons be the most strictly compelled to it, 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 385 

the public are hardly yet convinced ; and they must be 
convinced. If the danger of the principal thoroughfares 
in their capital city, and the multiplication of crimes more 
ghastly than ever yet disgraced a nominal civilization, are 
not enough, they will not have to wait long before they 
receive sterner lessons. For our neglect of the lower orders 
has reached a point at which it begins to bear its necessary 
fruit, and every day makes the fields, not whiter, but more 
sable, to harvest. 

130. The general principles by which employment should 
be regulated may be briefly stated as follows : — 

(1) There being three great classes of mechanical powers 
at our disposal, namely, (a) vital or muscular power ; (J?) 
natural mechanical power of wind, water, and electricity ; 
and (/) artificially produced mechanical power ; it is the 
first principle of economy to use all available vital power 
first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and only at last to 
have recourse to artificial power. And this because it is 
always better for a man to work with his own hands to feed 
and clothe himself, than to stand idle while a machine works 
for him ; and if he cannot by all the labor healthily possible 
to him, feed and clothe himself, then it is better to use an 
inexpensive machine — as a windmill or watermill — than a 
costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we have natural 
force enough at our disposal. Whereas, at present, we con- 
tinually hear economists regret that the water-power of the 
cascades or streams of a country should be lost, but hardly 
ever that the muscular power of its idle inhabitants should 
be lost ; and, again, we see vast districts, as the south of 
Provence, where a strong wind * blows steadily all day long 
for six days out of seven throughout the year, without a 

1 In order fully to utilize this natural power, we only require machin- 
ery to turn the variable into a constant velocity — no insurmountable 
difficulty. 



386 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

windmill, while men are continually employed a hundred 
miles to the north, in digging fuel to obtain artificial power. 
But the principal point of all to be kept in view is, that in 
every idle arm and shoulder throughout the country there is 
a certain quantity of force, equivalent to the force of so 
much fuel ; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal 
for our force, while the vital force is unused ; and not only 
unused, but, in being so, corrupting and polluting itself. 
We waste our coal, and spoil our humanity at one and the 
same instant. Therefore, wherever there is an idle arm, 
always save coal with it, and the stores of England will last 
all the longer. And precisely the same argument answers 
the common one about "taking employment out of the hands 
of the industrious laborer." Why, what is "employment" 
but the putting out of vital force instead of mechanical 
force ? We are continually in search of means of strength, 
— to pull, to hammer, to fetch, to carry ; we waste our future 
resources to get this strength, while we leave all the living 
fuel to burn itself out in mere pestiferous breath, and pro- 
duction of its variously noisome forms of ashes ! Clearly, 
if we want fire for force, we want men for force first. The 
industrious hands must already have so much to do that 
they can do no more, or else we need not use machines 
to help them. Then use the idle hands first. Instead of 
dragging petroleum with a steam-engine, put it on a canal, 
and drag it with human arms and shoulders. Petroleum 
cannot possibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere. We can 
always order that, and many other things, time enough 
before we want it. So, the carriage of everything which 
does not spoil by keeping, may most wholesomely and 
safely be done by water-traction and sailing vessels ; and 
no healthier work can men be put to, nor better discipline, 
than such active porterage. 

131. (2d.) In employing all the muscular power at our 



ATHENA 1\ THE HEART. $Sj 

disposal we are to make the employments we choose as edu- 
cational as possible. For a wholesome human employment 
is the first and best method of education, mental as well as 
bodily. A man taught to plough, row, or steer well, and a 
woman taught to cook properly, and make a dress neatly, 
are already educated in many essential moral habits. Labor 
considered as a discipline has hitherto been thought of only 
for criminals ; but the real and noblest function of labor is 
to prevent crime, and not to be ^t'formatory, but Formatory. 
132. The third great principle of employment is, that 
whenever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced 
occupation should be directed to the production of useful 
articles only, that is to say, of food, of simple clothing, of 
lodging, or of the means of conveying, distributing, and 
preserving these. It is yet little understood by economists, 
and not at all by the public, that the employment of persons 
in a useless business cannot relieve ultimate distress. The 
money given to employ ribbon-makers at Coventry is merely 
so much money withdrawn from What would have employed 
lace-makers at Ffoniton : or makers of something else, as 
useless, elsewhere. We must spend our money in some way, 
at some time, and it cannot at any time be spent without 
employing somebody. If we gamble it away, the person 
who wins it must spend it ; if we lose it in a railroad specu- 
lation, it has gone into some one else's pockets, or merely 
gone to pay navvies for making a useless embankment, in- 
stead of to pay ribbon or button makers for making useless 
ribbons or buttons ; we cannot lose it (unless by actually 
destroying it) without giving employment of some kind ; and 
therefore, whatever quantity of money exists, the relative 
quantity of employment must some day come out of it ; but 
the distress of the nation signifies that the employments 
given have produced nothing that will support its existence. 
Men cannot live on ribbons, or buttons, or velvet, or by 



388 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

going quickly from place to place ; and every coin spent in 
useless ornament, or useless motion, is so much withdrawn 
from the national means of life. One of the most beautiful 
uses of railroads is to enable A to travel from the town of 
X to take away the business of B in the town of Y ; while, 
in the meantime, B travels from the town of Y to take away 
A's business in the town of X. But the national wealth is 
not increased by these operations. Whereas every coin 
spent in cultivating ground, in repairing lodging, in making 
necessary and good roads, in preventing danger by sea or 
land, and in carriage of food or fuel where they are required, 
is so much absolute and direct gain to the whole nation. 
To cultivate land round Coventry makes living easier at 
Honiton, and every acre of sand gained from the sea in 
Lincolnshire makes life easier all over England. 

4th, and lastly. Since for every idle person, some one 
else must be working somewhere to provide him with clothes 
and food, and doing, therefore, double the quantity of work 
that would be enough for his own needs, it is only a matter 
of pure justice to compel the idle person to work for his 
maintenance himself. The conscription has been used in 
many countries, to take away laborers who supported their 
families, from their useful work, and maintain them for pur- 
poses chiefly of military display at the public expense. 
Since this has been long endured by the most civilized 
nations, let it not be thought that they would not much more 
gladly endure a conscription which should seize only the 
vicious and idle, already living by criminal procedures at the 
public expense ,• and which should discipline and educate 
them to labor which would not only maintain themselves, 
but be serviceable to the commonwealth. The question is 
simply this: — we must feed the drunkard, vagabond, and 
thief; — but shall we do so by letting them steal their food, 
and do no work for it ? or shall we give them their food in 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 389 

appointed quantity, and enforce their doing work which 
shall be worth it ? and which, in process of time, will redeem 
their own characters, and make them happy and serviceable 
members of society ? 

I find by me a violent little fragment of undelivered 
lecture, which puts this, perhaps, still more clearly. Your 
idle people (it says), as they are now, are not merely waste 
coal-beds. They are explosive coal-beds, which you pay a 
high annual rent for. You are keeping all these idle per- 
sons, remember, at far greater cost than if they were busy. 
Do you think a vicious person eats less than an honest one? 
or that it is cheaper to keep a bad man drunk, than a good 
man sober? There is, I suppose, a dim idea in the mind of 
the public, that they don't pay for the maintenance of people 
they don't employ. Those staggering rascals at the street 
corner, grouped around its splendid angle of public-house, 
we fancy they are no servants of ours ? that we pay them no 
wages ? that no cash oat of our pockets is spent over that 
beer-stained counter ! 

Whose cash is it then they are spending ? It is not got 
honestly by work. You know that much. Where do they 
get it from? Who has paid for their dinner and their pot? 
Those fellows can only live in one of two ways — by pillage 
or beggary. Their annual income by thieving comes out of 
the public pocket, you will admit. They are not cheaply 
fed, so far as they are fed by theft. But the rest of their 
living — all that they don't steal — they must beg. Not with 
success from you, you think. Wise as benevolent, you 
never gave a penny in " indiscriminate charity." Well, I 
congratulate you on the freedom of your conscience from 
that sin, mine being bitterly burdened with the memory of 
many a sixpence given to beggars of whom I knew nothing, 
but that they had pale faces and thin waists. But it is not 
that kind of street beggary that the vagabonds of our people 



390 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

chiefly practice. It is home beggary that is the worst beg- 
gars' trade. Home alms which it is their worst degradation 
to receive. Those scamps know well enough that you and 
your wisdom are worth nothing to them. They won't beg of 
you. They will beg of their sisters, and mothers, and wives, 
and children, and of any one else who is enough ashamed of 
being of the same blood with them to pay to keep them out of 
sight. Every one of those blackguards is the bane of a family. 
That is the deadly "indiscriminate charity" — the charity 
which each household pays to maintain its own private curse. 
133. And you think that is no affair of yours ? and that 
every family ought to watch over and subdue its own living 
plague? Put it to yourself this way, then : suppose you 
knew every one of those families kept an idol in an inner 
room — a big-bellied bronze figure, to which daily sacrifice 
and oblation was made ; at whose feet so much beer and 
brandy was poured out every morning on the ground : and 
before which, every night, good meat, enough for two men's 
keep, was set, and left, till it was putrid, and then carried 
out and thrown on the dunghill ; — you would put an end 
to that form of idolatry with your best diligence, I suppose. 
You would understand then that the beer, and brandy, and 
meat, were wasted ; and that the burden imposed by each 
household on itself lay heavily through them on the whole 
community ? But, suppose farther, that this idol were not 
of silent and quiet bronze only ; — but an ingenious 
mechanism, wound up every morning, to run itself down in 
automatic blasphemies ; that it struck and tore with its 
hands the people who set food before it ; that it was 
anointed with poisonous unguents and infected the air for 
miles round. You would interfere with the idolatry then, 
straightway ? Will you not interfere with it now, when the 
infection that the venomous idol spreads is not merely 
death — but sin ? 



ATHENA IX THE HEART. 39 1 

134. So far the old lecture Returning to cool English, 
the end of the matter is, that sooner or later, we shall have 
to register our people ; and to know how they live ; and to 
make sure, if they are capable of work, that right work is 
given them to do. 

The different classes of work for which bodies of men 
could be consistently organized, might ultimately become 
numerous ; these following divisions of occupation may at 
once be suggested : — 

(1) Road-making. — Good roads to be made, wherever 
needed, and kept in repair ; and the annual loss on unfre- 
quented roads, in spoiled horses, strained wheels, and time, 
done away with. 

(2) Bringing in of waste land. — All waste lands not 
necessary for public health, to be made accessible and 
gradually reclaimed ; chiefly our wide and waste seashores. 
Not our mountains nor moorland. Our life depends on 
them, more than on the best arable we have. 

(3) Harbor-making. — -The deficiencies of safe or conven- 
ient harborage in our smaller ports to be remedied ; other 
harbors built at dangerous points of coast, and a disciplined 
body of men always kept in connection with the pilot and 
life-boat services. There is room for every order of 
intelligence in this work, and for a large body of superior 
officers. 

(4) Porterage. — All heavy goods, not requiring speed in 
transit, to be carried (under preventive duty on transit by 
railroad) by canal-boats, employing men for draught ; and 
the merchant-shipping service extended by sea ; so that no 
ships may be wrecked for want of hands, while there are 
idle ones in mischief on shore. 

(5) Repair of buildings. — A body of men in various 
trades to be kept at the disposal of the authorities in every 
large town, for repair of buildings, especially the houses of 



392 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

the poorer orders, who, if no such provision were made, 
could not employ workmen on their own houses, but would 
simply live with rent walls and roofs. 

(6) Dressmaking. — Substantial dress, of standard ma- 
terial and kind, strong shoes, and stout bedding, to be 
manufactured for the poor, so as to render it unnecessary 
for them, unless by extremity of improvidence, to wear cast 
clothes, or be without sufficiency of clothing. 

(7) Works of Art. ■ — Schools to be established on 
thoroughly sound principles of manufacture, and use of 
materials, and with sample and, for given periods, unalter- 
able modes of work ; first, in pottery, and embracing 
gradually metal work, sculpture, and decorative painting ; 
the two points insisted upon, in distinction from ordinary 
commercial establishments, being perfectness of material 
to the utmost attainable degree ; and the production of 
everything by hand work, for the special purpose of devel- 
oping personal power and skill in the workman. 

The two last departments, and some subordinate branches 
of the others, would include the service of women and 
children. 

I give now, for such farther illustration as they contain 
of the points I desire most to insist upon with respect both 
to education and employment, a portion of the series of 
notes published some time ago in the Art Journal, on the 
opposition of Modesty and Liberty, and the unescapable 
laws of wise restraint. I am sorry that they are written 
obscurely ; — and it may be thought affectedly : — but the 
fact is, I have always had three different ways of writing ; 
one, with the single view of making myself understood, in 
which I necessarily omit a great deal of what comes into 
my head : — another, in which I say what I think ought to 
be said, in what I suppose to be the best words I can find 
for it (which is in reality an affected style- — be it good or 



ATHENA IN II 1 1". HEART. 393 

bad) ; and my third way of writing is to say all that comes 
into my head for my own pleasure, in the first words that 
come, retouching them afterwards into (approximate) gram- 
mar. These notes for the Art Journal were so written ; 
and I like them myself, of course ; but ask the reader's 
pardon for their confusedness. 

135. " Sir, it cannot be better done." 

We will insist, with the reader's permission, on this 
comfortful saying of Albert Durcr's, in order to find out, if 
we may, what Modesty is ; which it will be well for painters, 
readers, and especially critics, to know, before going farther. 
What it is ; or, rather, who she is ; her fingers being among 
the deftest in laying the ground-threads of Aglaia's Cestus. 

For this same opinion of Albert's is entertained by many 
other people respecting their own doings — a very preva- 
lent opinion, indeed, I find it ; and the answer itself, though 
rarely made with the Nuremberger's crushing decision, is, 
nevertheless, often enough intimated, with delicacy, by artists 
of all countries, in their various dialects. Neither can 
it always be held an entirely modest one, as it assuredly 
was in the man who would sometimes estimate a piece of 
his unconquerable work at only the worth of a plate of 
fruit, or a flask of wine — would have taken even one "fig 
for it," kindly offered ; or given it royally for nothing, to 
show his hand to a fellow-king of his own, or any other 
era ft — as Gainsborough gave the "Boy at the Stile" for a 
solo on the violin. An entirely modest saying, I repeat, 
in him — not always in us. For Modesty is " the measur- 
ing virtue," the virtue of modes or limits. She is, indeed, 
said to be only the third or youngest of the children of the 
cardinal virtue, Temperance ; and apt to be despised, being 
more given to arithmetic, and other vulgar studies (Cinde- 
rella-like) than her elder sisters ; but she is useful in the 
household, and arrives at great results with her yard-meas- 



394 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

ure and slate-pencil ■ — a pretty little Marchande des Modes, 
cutting her dress always according to the silk (if this be the 
proper feminine reading of "coat according to the cloth"), 
so that, consulting with her carefully of a morning, men 
get to know not only their income, but their inbeing — to 
know themselves, that is, in a gauger's manner, round, and 
up and down — surface and contents ; what is in them, and 
what may be got out of them ; and, in fine, their entire 
canon of weight and capacity. That yard-measure of Mod- 
esty's, lent to those who will use it, is a curious musical 
reed, and will go round and round waists that are slender 
enough, with latent melody in every joint of it, the dark 
root only being soundless, moist from the wave wherein — 

" Null' altra pianta che facesse fronda 
O indurasse, puote aver vita." 1 

But when the little sister herself takes it in hand, to meas- 
ure things outside of us with, the joints shoot out in an 
amazing manner ; the four-square walls even of celestial 
cities being measurable enough by that reed ; and the way 
pointed to them, though only to be followed, or even seen, 
in the dim starlight shed down from worlds amidst which 
there is no name of Measure aay more, though the reality 
of it always. For, indeed, to all true modesty the necessary 
business is not inlook, but outlook, and especially upXook. ; 
it is only her sister, Shamefacedness, who is known by 
the drooping lashes — Modesty, quite otherwise, by her 
large eyes full of wonder ; for she never contemns herself, 
nor is ashamed of herself, but forgets herself — at least 
until she has done something worth memory. It is easy to 
peep and potter about one's own deficiencies in a quiet 
immodest discontent ; but Modesty is so pleased with 
other people's doings, that she has no leisure to lament 
1 Purgatorio, I. 103. 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 395 

her own; and thus, knowing the fresh feeling of content- 
ment, unstained with thought of self, she dues not fear 
being pleased, when there is cause, with her own Tightness, 
as with another's, saying calmly, " Be it mine, or yours, or 
whose else's it may, it is no matter; — this also is well." 
But the right to say such a thing depends on continual 
reverence, and manifold sense of failure. If you have 
known yourself to have failed, you may trust, when it 
comes, the strange consciousness of success ; if you have 
faithfully loved the noble work of others, you need not fear 
to speak with respect of things duly done, of your own. 

136. But the principal good that comes of art's being 
followed in this reverent feeling, is vitally manifest in the 
associative conditions of it. Men who know their place, 
can take it and keep it, be it low or high, contentedly and 
firmly, neither yielding nor grasping ; and the harmony 
of hand and thought follows, rendering all great deeds of 
art possible — deeds in which the souls of men meet like 
the jewels in the windows of Aladdin's palace, the little 
gems and the large all equally pure, needing no cement but 
the fitting of facets; while the associative work of immodest 
men is all jointless, and astir with wormy ambition; putridly 
dissolute, and forever on the crawl ; so that if it come 
together for a time, it can only be by metamorphosis through 
flash of volcanic fire out of the vale of Siddim, vitrifying the 
clay of it, and fastening the slime, only to end in wilder 
scattering ; according to the fate of those oldest, mightiest, 
immodestest of builders, of whom it is told in scorn, " They 
had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar." 1 

137. The first function of Modesty, then, being this rec- 
ognition of place, her second is the recognition of law, and 
delight in it, for the sake of law itself, whether her part 
be to assert it, or obey. For as it belongs to all immodesty 

1 Genesis xi. 3. 



396 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

to defy or deny law, and assert privilege and license, accord- 
ing to its own pleasure (it being, therefore, rightly called 
"inso/enf," that is, "custom-breaking," violating some usual 
and appointed order to attain for itself greater forwardness 
or power), so it is the habit of all modesty to love the 
constancy and " solemnity," or, literally, " accustomedness," 
of law, seeking first what are the solemn, appointed, invio- 
lable customs and general orders of nature, and of the 
Master of nature, touching the matter in hand; and striving 
to put itself, as habitually and inviolably, in compliance with 
them. Out of which habit, once established, arises what is 
rightly called "conscience," not "science" merely, but 
" with-science," a science "with us," such as only modest, 
creatures can have — with or within them — and within all 
creation besides, every member of it, strong or weak, wit- 
nessing together, and joining in the happy consciousness 
that each one's work is good ; the bee, also, being pro- 
foundly of that opinion ; and the lark ; and the swallow, in 
that noisy, but modestly upside-down, Babel of hers, under 
the eaves, with its unvolcanic slime for mortar ; and the two 
ants who are asking of each other at the turn of that little 
ant's -foot -worn path through the moss, "lor via e lor 
fortuna " ; and the builders also, who built yonder pile of 
cloud-marble in the west, and the gilder who gilded it, and 
is gone down behind it. 

138. But I think we shall better understand what we 
ought of the nature of Modesty, and of her opposite, by 
taking a simple instance of both, in the practice of that art 
of music which the wisest have agreed in thinking the first 
element of education ; only I must ask the reader's patience 
with me through a parenthesis. 

Among the foremost men whose power has had to assert 
itself, though with conquest, yet with countless loss, through 
peculiarly English disadvantages of circumstance, are 



ATHENA IX THE HEART. 397 

assuredly to be ranked together, both for honor and for 
mourning, Thomas Bewick and George Cruikshank. There 
is, however, less cause for regret in the instance of Bewick. 
We may understand that it was well for us once to see what 
an entirely powerful painter's genius, and an entirely keen 
and true man's temper, could achieve, together, unhelped, 
but also unharmed, among the black banks and wolds of 
Tyne. But the genius of Cruikshank has been cast away in 
an utterly ghastly and lamentable manner : his superb line- 
work, worthy of any class of subject, and his powers of 
conception and composition, of which I cannot venture to 
estimate the range in their degraded application, having 
been condemned, by his fate, to be spent either in rude 
jesting, or in vain war with conditions of vice too low alike 
for record or rebuke, among the dregs of the British popu- 
lace. Yet perhaps I am wrong in regretting even this: it 
may be an appointed lesson for futurity, that the art of the 
best English etcher in the nineteenth century, spent on 
illustrations of the lives of burglars and drunkards, should 
one day be seen in museums beneath Greek vases fretted 
with drawings of the wars of Troy, or side by side with 
Durer's " Knight and Death." 

139. Be that as it may, I am at present glad to be able 
to refer to one of these perpetuations, by his strong hand, 
of such human character as our faultless British constitu- 
tion occasionally produces, in out-of-the-way corners. It 
is among his illustrations of the Irish Rebellion, and repre- 
sents the pillage and destruction of a gentleman's house by 
the mob. They have made a heap in the drawing-room of 
the furniture and books, to set first fire to ; and are tearing 
up the floor for its more easily kindled planks : the less 
busily-disposed meanwhile hacking round in rage, with axes, 
and smashing what they can with butt-ends of guns. I do 
not care to follow with words the ghastly truth of the picture 



39§ THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

into its detail ; but the most expressive incident of the 
whole, and the one immediately to my purpose, is this, that 
one fellow has sat himself at the piano, on which, hitting 
down fiercely with his clenched fists, he plays, grinning, 
such tune as may be so producible, to which melody two of 
his companions, flourishing knotted sticks, dance, after their 
manner, on the top of the instrument. 

140. I think we have in this conception as perfect an 
instance as we require of the lowest supposable phase of 
immodest or licentious art in music ; the " inner conscious- 
ness of good " being dim, even in the musician and his 
audience ; and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowl- 
edged, by the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and 
cosmic powers. This represented scene came into my mind 
suddenly, one evening, a few weeks ago, in contrast with 
another which I was watching in its reality ; namely, a 
group of gentle school-girls, leaning over Mr. Charles Halle 
as he was playing a variation on " Home, Sweet Home." 
They had sustained with unwonted courage the glance of 
subdued indignation with which, having just closed a rip- 
pling melody of Sebastian Bach's (much like what one 
might fancy the singing of nightingales would be if they fed 
on honey instead of flies), he turned to the slight, popular 
air. But they had their own associations with it, and be- 
sought for, and obtained it ; and pressed close, at first, in 
vain, to see what no glance could follow, the traversing of 
the fingers. They soon thought no more of seeing. The 
wet eyes, round-open, and the little scarlet upper lips, lifted, 
and drawn slightly together, in passionate glow of utter 
wonder, became picture-like, — porcelain-like, — in motionless 
joy, as the sweet multitude of low notes fell in their timely 
infinities, like summer rain. Only La Robbia himself (nor 
even he, unless with tenderer use of color than is usual in 
his work) could have rendered some image of that listening. 



A I HEN \ IN THE HEART. 399 

141. Hut if the reader can give due vitality in his fancy 
to these two scenes, lie will have in them representative 
types, clear enough for all future purpose, of 'the several 
agencies of debased and perfect art. And the interval may 
easily and continuously be tilled by mediate gradations, 
between the entirely immodest, unmeasured, and (in evil 
sense) unmannered, execution with the fist; and the entirely 
modest, measured, and (in the noblest sense) mannered, or 
moraled, execution with the finger; between the impatient 
and unpracticed doing, containing in itself the witness of 
lasting impatience and idleness through all previous life, 
and the patient and practiced doing, containing in itself 
the witness of self-restraint and unwearied toil through 
all previous life ; — between the expressed subject and 
sentiment of home violation, and the expressed subject 
and sentiment of home love ; — between the sympathy of 
audience, given in irreverent and contemptuous rage, joy- 
less as the rabidness of a dog, and the sympathy of 
audience given in an almost appalled humility of intense, 
raptuious, and yet entirely reasoning and reasonable pleas- 
ure ; — between these two limits of octave, the reader will 
find he can class, according to its modesty, usefulness, and 
grace, or becomingness, all other musical art. For although 
purity of purpose and fineness of execution by no means go 
together, degree to degree (since fine, and indeed all but 
the finest, work is often spent in the most wanton purpose 
— as in all our modern opera — and the rudest execution 
is again often joined with purest purpose, as in a mother's 
song to her child), still the entire accomplishment of music 
is only in the union of both. For the difference between 
that "all but" finest and "finest" is an infinite one; and 
besides this, however the power of the performer, once 
attained, may be afterwards misdirected, in slavery to pop- 
ular passion or childishness, and spend itself, at its sweetest, 



400 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

in idle melodies, cold and ephemeral (like Michael Angelo's 
snow statue in the other art), or else in vicious difficulty 
and miserable noise — crackling of thorns under the pot of 
public sensuality — still, the attainment of this power, and 
the maintenance of it, involve always in the executant some 
virtue or courage of high kind ; the understanding of which, 
and of the difference between the discipline which develops 
it and the disorderly efforts of the amateur, it will be one of 
our first businesses to estimate rightly. And though not 
indeed by degree to degree, yet in essential relation (as of 
winds to waves, the one being always the true cause of the 
other, though they are not necessarily of equal force at the 
same time), we shall find vice in its varieties, with art- 
failure, — and virtue in its varieties, with art-success, — fall 
and rise together: the peasant-girl's song at her spinning- 
wheel, the peasant-laborer's " to the oaks and rills," — 
domestic music, feebly yet sensitively skillful, — music for 
the multitude, of beneficent, or of traitorous power, — dance- 
melodies, pure and orderly, or foul and frantic, — march- 
music, blatant in mere fever of animal pugnacity, or majestic 
with force of national duty and memory, — song-music, 
reckless, sensual, sickly, slovenly, forgetful even of the 
foolish words it effaces with foolish noise, — or thoughtful, 
sacred, healthful, artful, forever sanctifying noble thought 
with separately distinguished loveliness of belonging sound, 
— all these families and gradations of good or evil, however 
mingled, follow, in so far as they are good, one constant law 
of virtue (or " life-strength," which is the literal meaning 
of the word, and its intended one, in wise men's mouths), 
and in so far as they are evil, are evil by outlawry and 
unvirtue, or death-weakness. Then, passing wholly beyond 
the domain of death, we may still imagine the ascendant 
nobleness of the art, through all the concordant life of 
incorrupt creatures, and a continually deeper harmony of 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 40 1 

"puissant words and murmurs made to bless," until we 
reach — 

"The undisturbed song of pure consent, 
Aye sun- before the sapphire-colored throne." 

142. And so far as the sister arts can be conceived to 
have place or office, their virtues are subject to a law 
absolutely the same as that of music, only extending its 
authority into more various conditions, owing to the intro- 
duction of a distinctly representative and historical power, 
which acts under logical as well as mathematical restric- 
tions, and is capable of endlessly changeful fault, fallacy, 
and defeat, as well as of endlessly manifold victory. 

143. Next to Modesty, and her delight in measures, let 
us reflect a little on the character of her adversary, the 
Goddess of Liberty, and her delight in absence of meas- 
ures, or in false ones. It is true that there are liberties 
and liberties. Yonder torrent, crystal-clear, and arrow- 
swift, with its spray leaping into the air like white troops 
of fawns, is free enough. Lost, presently, amidst bankless, 
boundless marsh — soaking in slow shallowness, as it will, 
hither and thither, listless, among the poisonous reeds and 
unresisting slime — it is free also. We may choose which 
liberty we like, — the restraint of voiceful rock, or the dumb 
and edgeless shore of darkened sand. Of that evil liberty, 
which men are now glorifying, and proclaiming as essence 
of gospel to all the earth, and will presently, I suppose, 
proclaim also to the stars, with invitation to them out of 
their courses, — and of its opposite continence, which is 
the clasp and xP vcr *V irepovr] 1 of Aglaia's cestus, we must 
try to find out something true. For no quality of Art has 
been more powerful in its influence on public mind ; none 
is more frequently the subject of popular praise, or the 
end of vulgar effort, than what we call " Freedom." It is 

1 Golden buckle. 



402 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

necessary to determine the justice or injustice of this 
popular praise. 

144. I said, a little while ago, that the practical teaching 
of the masters of Art was summed by the O of Giotto. 
"You may judge my masterhood of craft," Giotto tells us, 
"by seeing that I can draw a circle unerringly." And we 
may safely believe him, understanding him to mean, that 
— though more may be necessary to an artist than such a 
power — at least this power is necessary. The qualities of 
hand and eye needful to do this are the first conditions of 
artistic craft. 

145. Try to draw a circle yourself with the "free " hand, 
and with a single line. You cannot do it if your hand 
trembles, nor if it hesitates, nor if it is unmanageable, nor 
if it is in the common sense of the word "free." So far 
from being free, it must be under a control as absolute and 
accurate as if it were fastened to an inflexible bar of steel. 
And yet it must move, under this necessary control, with 
perfect, untormented serenity of ease. 

146. This is the condition of all good work whatsoever. 
All freedom is error. Every line you lay down is either 
right or wrong : it may be timidly and awkwardly wrong, 
or fearlessly and impudently wrong : the aspect of the 
impudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar persons ; and 
is what they commonly call "free" execution: the timid, 
tottering, hesitating wrongness is rarely so attractive ; yet 
sometimes, if accompanied with good qualities, and right 
aims in other directions, it becomes in a manner charming, 
like the inarticulateness of a child : but, whatever the charm 
or manner of the error, there is but one question ultimately 
to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or 
wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, 
but an intensely continent, restrained, and considered line ; 
and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 4O3 

and just as "free" as the hand of a first rate surgeon in 
a critical incision. A great operator told me that his hand 
could check itself within about the two-hundredth of an inch, 
in penetrating a membrane ; and this, of course, without the 
help of sight, by sensation only. With help of sight, and in 
action on a substance which does not quiver nor yield, a 
fine artist's line is measurable in its proposed direction to 
considerably less than the thousandth of an inch. 

A wide freedom, truly ! 

147. The conditions of popular art which most foster the 
common ideas about freedom, are merely results of irreg- 
ularly energetic effort by men imperfectly educated ; these 
conditions being variously mingled with cruder mannerisms 
resulting from timidity, or actual imperfection of body. 
Northern hands and eyes are, of course, never so subtle 
as Southern ; and in very cold countries, artistic execution 
is palsied. The effort to break through this timidity, or 
to refine the bluntness, may lead to a licentious impetuosity, 
or an ostentatious minuteness. Every man's manner has 
this kind of relation to some defect in his physical 
powers or modes of thought ; so that in the greatest 
work there is no manner visible. It is at first un- 
interesting from its quietness ; the majesty of restrained 
power only dawns gradually upon us, as we walk towards 
its horizon. 

There is, indeed, often great delightfulness in the inno- 
cent manners of artists who have real power and honesty, 
and draw, in this way or that, as best they can, under such 
and such untoward circumstances of life. But the greater 
part of the looseness, flimsiness, or audacity of modern 
work is the expression of an inner spirit of license in mind 
and heart, connected, as I said, with the peculiar folly of 
this age, its hope of, and trust in, " liberty." Of which we 
must reason a little in more general terms. 



404 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

148. I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a 
perfectly free creature than in the common house fly. Nor 
free only, but brave ; and irreverent to a degree which I 
think no human republican could by any philosophy exalt 
himself to. There is no courtesy in him ; he does not care 
whether it is king or clown whom he teases ; and in every 
step of his swift mechanical march, and in every pause of 
his resolute observation, there is one and the same expres- 
sion of perfect egotism, perfect independence and self-con- 
fidence, and conviction of the world's having been made 
for flies. Strike at him with your hand ; and to him, the 
mechanical fact and external aspect of the matter is, what 
to you it would be, if an acre of red clay, ten feet thick, 
tore itself up from the ground in one massive field, hovered 
over you in the air for a second, and came crashing down 
with an aim. That is the external aspect of it ; the inner 
aspect, to his flyfs mind, is of a quite natural and unimpor- 
tant occurrence — one of the momentary conditions of his 
active life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and 
alights on the back of it. You cannot terrify him, nor 
govern him, nor persuade him, nor convince him. He has 
his own positive opinion on all matters ; not an unwise one, 
usually, for his own ends ; and will ask no advice of yours. 
He has no work to do — no tyrannical instinct to obey. 
The earthworm has his digging, the bee her gathering and 
building ; the spider her cunning net-work ; the ant her 
treasury and accounts. All these are comparatively slaves, 
or people of vulgar business. But your fly, free in the air, 
free in the chamber — a black incarnation of caprice — 
wandering, investigating, flitting, flirting, feasting at his will, 
with rich variety of choice in feast, from the heaped sweets 
in the grocer's window to those of the butcher's back-yard, 
and from the galled place on your cab-horse's back, to the 
brown spot in the road, from which, as the hoof disturbs 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 405 

him, he rises with angry republican buzz — what freedom 
is like his? 

149. For captivity, again, perhaps your poor watch-dog is 
as sorrowful a type as you will easily find. Mine certainly 
is. The day is lovely, but I must write this, and cannot go 
out with him. He is chained in the yard, because I do not 
like dogs in rooms, and the gardener does not like dogs in 
gardens. He has no books, — nothing but his own weary 
thoughts for company, and a group of those free flies, whom 
he snaps at, with sullen ill success. Such dim hope as he 
may have that I may yet take him out with me, will be, hour 
by hour, wearily disappointed ; or, worse, darkened at once 
into a leaden despair by an authoritative "No"- — too well 
understood. His fidelity only seals his fate ; if he would 
not watch for me, he would be sent away, and go hunting 
with some happier master : but he watches, and is wise, and 
faithful, and miserable : and his high animal intellect only 
gives him the wistful powers of wonder, and sorrow, and 
desire, and affection, which embitter his captivity. Yet of 
the two, would we rather be watch-dog, or fly ? 

150. Indeed, the first point we have all to determine is 
not how free we are, but what kind of creatures we are. It 
is of small importance to any of us whether we get liberty ; 
but of the greatest that we deserve it. Whether we can win 
it, fate must determine ; but that we will be worthy of it, we 
may ourselves determine ; and the sorrowfullest fate, ©f all 
that we can suffer, is to have it, without deserving it. 

151. I have hardly patience to hold my pen and go on 
writing, as I remember (I would that it were possible for a 
few consecutive instants to forget) the infinite follies of 
modern thought in this matter, centered in the notion that 
liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use he is 
likely to make of it. Folly unfathomable ! unspeakable ! 
unendurable to look in the full face of, as the laugh of a 



4-06 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

cretin. You will send your child, will you, into a room 
where the table is loaded with sweet wine and fruit — some 
poisoned, some not? — you will say to him, "Choose freely, 
my little child ! It is so good for you to have freedom of 
choice: it forms your character — your individuality! If 
you take the wrong cup, or the wrong berry, you will die 
before the day is over, but you will have acquired the 
dignity of a Free child ? " 

152. You think that puts the case too sharply? I tell 
you, lover of liberty, there is no choice offered to you, but it 
is similarly between life and death. There is no act, nor 
option of act, possible, but the wrong deed or option has 
poison in it which will stay in your veins thereafter forever. 
Never more to all eternity can you be as you might have 
been, had you not done that — chosen that. You have 
"formed your character," forsooth ! No ; if you have chosen 
ill, you have De-formed it, and that forever ! In some 
choices, it had been better for you that a red hot iron bar 
had struck you aside, scarred and helpless, than that you 
had so chosen. " You will know better next time ! " No. 
Next time will never come. Next time the choice will be in 
quite another aspect — between quite different things, — 
you, weaker than you were by the evil into which you have 
fallen ; it, more doubtful than it was, by the increased dim- 
ness of your sight. No one ever gets wiser by doing wrong, 
nor stronger. You will get wiser and stronger only by doing 
right, whether forced or not ; the prime, the one need is to 
do that, under whatever compulsion. And then you are a 
Man. 

153. "What!" a wayward youth might perhaps answer, 
incredulously; "no one ever gets wiser by doing wrong? 
Shall I not know the world best by trying the wrong of it, 
and repenting ? Have I not, even as it is, learned much by 
many of my errors ? " Indeed, the effort by which partially 



ATI 1 1 N \ l\ THE III. \ K I . 407 

you recovered yourself was precious ; that part of your 
thought by which you discerned the error was precious. 
What wisdom and strength you kept, and rightly used, are 
rewarded ; and in the pain and the repentance, and in the 
acquaintance with the aspects of folly and sin, you have 
learned something; how much less than you would have 
learned in right paths, can never be told, but that it is less 
is certain. Your liberty of choice has simply destroyed for 
you so much life and strength, never regainable. It is true 
you now know the habits of swine, and the taste of husks : 
do you think your father could not have taught you to know 
better habits and pleasanter tastes, if you had stayed in his 
house ; and that the knowledge you have lost would not 
have been more, as well as sweeter, than that you have 
gained ? But " it so forms my individuality to be free ! " 
Your individuality was given you by God, and in your race ; 
and if you have any to speak of, you will want no liberty. 
You will want a den to work in, and peace, and light- — 
no more, — in absolute need ; if more, in anywise, it will 
still not be liberty, but direction, instruction, reproof, and 
sympathy. But if you have no individuality, if there is no 
true character nor true desire in you, then you will indeed 
want to be free. You will begin early ; and, as a boy, desire 
to be a man ; and, as a man, think yourself as good as every 
other. You will choose freely to eat, freely to drink, freely 
to stagger and fall, freely, at last, to curse yourself and die. 
Death is the only real freedom possible to us : and that is 
consummate freedom, — permission for every particle in the 
rotting body to leave its neighbor particle, and shift for 
itself. You call it "corruption" in the flesh ; but before it 
comes to that, all liberty is an equal corruption in mind. 
You ask for freedom of thought ; but if you have not suf- 
ficient grounds for thought, you have no business to think ; 
and if you have sufficient grounds, you have no business to 



408 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

think wrong. Only one thought is possible to you, if you 
are wise — your liberty is geometrically proportionate to 
your folly. 

154. "But all this glory and activity of our age; what 
are they owing to, but to our freedom of thought?" In a 
measure, they are owing — what good is in them — to the 
discovery of many lies, and the escape from the power of 
evil. Not to liberty, but to the deliverance from evil or 
cruel masters. Brave men have dared to examine lies which 
had long been taught, not because they were/m'-thinkers, 
but because they were such stern and close thinkers that the 
lie could no longer escape them. Of course the restriction 
of thought, or of its expression, by persecution, is merely a 
form of violence, justifiable or not, as other violence is, 
according to the character of the persons against whom it is 
exercised, and the divine and eternal laws which it vindi- 
cates or violates. We must not burn a man alive for saying 
that the Athanasian creed is ungrammatical, nor stop a 
bishop's salary because we are getting the worst of an argu- 
ment with him ; neither must we let drunken men howl in 
the public streets at night. There is much that is true in 
the part of Mr. Mill's essay on Liberty which treats of 
freedom of thought ; some important truths are there beau- 
tifully expressed, but many, quite vital, are omitted ; and 
the balance, therefore, is wrongly struck. The liberty of 
expression, with a great nation, would become like that in a 
well-educated company, in which there is indeed freedom of 
speech, but not of clamor ; or like that in an orderly senate, 
in which men who deserve to be heard, are heard in due 
time, and under determined restrictions. The degree of 
liberty you can rightly grant to a number of men is in the 
inverse ratio of their desire for it ; and a general hush, or 
call to order, would be often very desirable in this England 
of ours. For the rest, of any good or evil extant, it is 



ATHENA IN THE HEART. 4O9 

impossible to say what measure is owing to restraint, and 
what to license where the right is balanced between them. 
I was not a little provoked one day, a summer or two since, 
in Scotland, because the Duke of Athol hindered me from 
examining the gneiss and slate junctions in Glen Tilt, at the 
hour convenient to me; but 1 saw them at last, and in 
quietness ; and to the very restriction that annoyed me, 
owed, probably, the fact of their being in existence, instead 
of being blasted away by a mob-company ; while the "free" 
paths and inlets of Loch Katrine and the Lake of Geneva 
are forever trampled down and destroyed, not by one duke, 
but by tens of thousands of ignorant tyrants. 

155. So, a Dean and Chapter may, perhaps, unjustifiably 
charge me twopence for seeing a cathedral ; — but your free 
mob pulls spire and all down about my ears, and I can see 
it no more forever. And even if I cannot get up to the 
granite junctions in the glen, the stream comes down from 
them pure to the Garry ; but in Beddington Park I am 
stopped by the newly erected fence of a building speculator ; 
and the bright Wandel, divine of waters as Castaly, is filled 
by the free public with old shoes, obscene crockery, and 
ashes. 

156. Jn fine, the arguments for liberty may in general be 
summed in a few very simple forms, as follows : — 

Misguiding is mischievous : therefore guiding is. 

If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch : there- 
fore, nobody should lead anybody. 

Lambs and fawns should be left free in the fields ; much 
more bears and wolves. 

If a man's gun and shot are his own, he may fire in any 
direction he pleases. 

A fence across a road is inconvenient ; much more one at 
the side of it. 

Babes should not be swaddled with their hands bound 



410 THE QUEEN OF THE A1R-. 

down to their sides : therefore they should be thrown out to 
roll in the kennels naked. 

None of these arguments are good, and the practical 
issues of them are worse. For there are certain eternal 
laws for human conduct which are quite clearly discernible 
by human reason. So far as these are discovered and 
obeyed, by whatever machinery or authority the obedience 
is procured, there follow life and strength. So far as they 
are disobeyed, by whatever good intention the disobedience 
is brought about, there follow ruin and sorrow. And the 
first duty of every man in the world is to find his true 
master, and, for his own good, submit to him ; and to find 
his true inferior, and, for that inferior's good, conquer him. 
The punishment is sure, if we either refuse the reverence, 
or are too cowardly or indolent to enforce the compulsion. 
A base nation crucifies or poisons its wise men, and lets its 
fools rave and rot in its streets. A wise nation obeys the 
one, restrains the other, and cherishes all. 

157. The best examples of the results of wise normal 
discipline in Art will be found in whatever evidence remains 
respecting the lives of great Italian painters, though un- 
happily, in eras of progress, but just in proportion to the 
admirableness and efficiency of the life, will be usually the 
scantiness of its history. The individualities and liberties 
which are causes of destruction may be recorded ; but the 
loyal conditions of daily breath are never told. Because 
Leonardo made models of machines, dug canals, built 
fortifications, and dissipated half his art-power in capricious 
ingenuities, we have many anecdotes of him ; — but no 
picture of importance on canvas, and only a few withered 
stains of one upon a wall. But because his pupil, or 
reputed pupil, Luini, labored in constant and successful 
simplicity, we have no anecdotes of him ; only hundreds of 
noble works. Luini is, perhaps, the best central type of the 



ATHENA IN THE ill. ART. 4 I I 

highly-trained Italian painter. He is the only man who 
entirely united the religious temper which was the spirit-life 
of art, with the physical power which was its bodily life. 
He joins the purity and passion of Angelico to the strength 
of Veronese : the two elements, poised in perfect balance, 
are so calmed and restrained, each by the other, that most 
of us lose the sense of both. The artist does not see the 
strength, by reason of the chastened spirit in which it is 
used ; and the religious visionary does not recognize the 
passion, by reason of the frank human truth with which it 
is rendered. He is a man ten times greater than 
Leonardo ; — a mighty colorist, while Leonardo was only a 
fine draughtsman in black, staining the chiaroscuro drawing, 
like a colored print : he perceived and rendered the deli- 
catest types of human beauty that have been painted since 
the days of the Greeks, while Leonardo depraved his finer 
instincts by caricature, and remained to the end of his days 
the slave of an archaic smile : and he is a designer as 
frank, instinctive, and exhaustless as Tintoret, while Leo- 
nardo's design is only an agony of science, admired chiefly 
because it is painful, and capable of analysis in its best 
accomplishment. Luini has left nothing behind him that is 
not lovely ; but of his life I believe hardly anything is 
known beyond remnants of tradition which murmur about 
Lugano and Saronno, and which remain ungleaned. This 
only is certain, that he was born in the loveliest district of 
North Italy, where hills, and streams, and air, meet in 
softest harmonies. Child of the Alps, and of their divinest 
lake, he is taught, without doubt or dismay, a lofty religious 
creed, and a sufficient law of life, and of its mechanical 
arts. Whether lessoned by Leonardo himself, or merely 
one of many, disciplined in the system of the Milanese 
school, he learns unerringly to draw, unerringly and endur- 
ingly to paint. His tasks are set him without question day 



412 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

by day, by men who are justly satisfied with his work, and 
who accept it without any harmful praise, or senseless blame. 
Place, scale, and subject are determined for him on the 
cloister wall or the church dome ; as he is required, and for 
sufficient daily bread, and little more, he paints what he has 
been taught to design wisely, and has passion to realize 
gloriously : every touch he lays is eternal, every thought he 
conceives is beautiful and pure : his hand moves always in 
radiance of blessing ; from day to day his life enlarges in 
power and peace ; it passes away cloudlessly, the starry 
twilight remaining arched far against the night. 

158. Oppose to such a life as this that of a great painter 
amidst the elements of modern English liberty. Take the 
life of Turner, in whom the artistic energy and inherent 
love of beauty were at least as strong as in Luini : but, 
amidst the disorder and ghastliness of the lower streets of 
London, his instincts in early infancy were warped into 
toleration of evil, or even into delight in it. He gathers 
what he can of instruction by questioning and prying 
among half-informed masters ; spells out some knowledge 
of classical fable ; educates himself, by an admirable force, 
to the production of wildly majestic or pathetically tender 
and pure pictures, by which he cannot live. There is no 
one to judge them, or to command him: only some of the 
English upper classes hire him to paint their houses and 
parks, and destroy the drawings afterwards by the most 
wanton neglect. Tired of laboring carefully, without either 
reward or praise, he dashes out into various experimental 
and popular works — makes himself the servant of the 
lower public, and is dragged hither and thither at their will ; 
while yet, helpless and guideless, he indulges his idiosyn- 
crasies till they change into insanities ; the strength of his 
soul increasing its sufferings, and giving force to its errors ; 
all the purpose of life degenerating into instinct ; and the 



ATHENA IX THE HEART. 413 

web of his work wrought, at last, of beauties too subtle 
to be understood, his liberty, with vices too singular to 
be forgiven — all useless because magnificent idiosyncrasy 
had become solitude, or contention, in the midst of a 
reckless populace, instead of submitting itself in loyal 
harmony to the Art-laws of an understanding nation. And 
the life passed away in darkness ; and its final work, in all 
the best beauty of it, has already perished, only enough 
remaining to teach us what we have lost. 

159. These are the opposite effects of Law and Liberty 
on men of the highest powers. In the case of inferiors the 
contrast is still more fatal : under strict law, they become the 
subordinate workers in great schools, healthily aiding, echo- 
ing, or supplying, with multitudinous force of hand, the mind 
of the leading masters : they are nameless carvers of great 
architecture — stainers of glass — hammerers of iron — help- 
ful scholars, whose work ranks round, if not with, their 
master's, and never disgraces it. But the inferiors under a 
system of license for the most part perish in a miserable 
effort; 1 a few struggle into pernicious eminence — harmful 

1 As I correct this sheet for press, my Pall Mall Gazette of last Satur- 
day, April 1 7th, is lying on the table by me. I print a few lines out of it: — 

"An Artist's Death.- — A sad story was told at an inquest held in 
St. l';incras last night by Dr. Lankester on the body of . . ., aged 
fifty-nine, a French artist, who was found dead in his bed at his rooms 
in . . . Street. M. . . ., also an artist, said he had known the de- 
ceased for fifteen years. lie once held a high position, and being 
anxious to make a name in the world, he five years ago commenced a 
large picture, which he hoped, when completed, to have in the gallery at 
Versailles ; and with that view he sent a photograph of it to the French 
Emperor. He also had an idea of sending it to the English Royal 
Academy. He labored on this picture, neglecting other work which 
would have paid him well, and gradually sank lower and lower into 
poverty. Mis friends assisted him, but being absorbed in his great 
work, he did not heed their advice, and they left him. He was, how- 
ever, assisted by the French Ambassador, and last Saturday he (the 
witness) saw deceased, who was much depressed in spirits, as he 



414 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

alike to themselves and to all who admire them ; many die 
of starvation ; many insane, either in weakness of insolent 
egotism, like Haydon, or in a conscientious agony of beauti- 
ful purpose and warped power, like Blake. There is no 
probability of the persistence of a licentious school in any 
good accidentally discovered by them ; there is an approxi- 
mate certainty of their gathering, with acclaim, round any 
shadow of evil, and following it to whatever quarter of 
destruction it may lead. 

1 60. Thus far the notes on Freedom. Now, lastly, here 
is some talk which I tried at the time to make intelligible • 
and with which I close this volume, because it will serve 
sufficiently to express the practical relation in which I think 
the art and imagination of the Greeks stand to our own ; 
and will show the reader that my view of that relation is un- 
changed, from the first day on which I began to write, until 
now. 

The Hercules of Camarina. 

Address to the Students of the Art School of South Lambeth, 
March I 5///, 1869. 

161. Among the photographs of Greek coins which pre- 
sent so many admirable subjects for your study, I must 
speak for the present of one only : the Hercules of Cama- 

expected the brokers to be put in possession for rent. He said his 
troubles were so great that he feared his brain would give way. The 
witness gave him a shilling, for which he appeared very thankful. On 
Monday the witness called upon him, but received no answer to his 
knock. He went again on Tuesday, and entered the deceased's bedroom 
and found him dead. Dr. George Ross said that when called in to the 
deceased he had been dead at least two days. The room was in a filthy 
dirty condition, and the picture referred to — certainly a very fine one — 
was in that room. The post-mortem examination showed that the cause 
of death was fatty degeneration of the heart, the latter probably having 
ceased its action through the mental excitement of the deceased." 



THE HERCULES OF CAMARINA. 4 1 5 

rina. You have, represented by a Greek workman, in that 
coin, the face of a man, and the skin of a lion's head. And 
the man's face is like a man'.-, face, but the lion's skin is not 
like a lion's skin. 

162. Now there are some people who will tell you that 
Greek art is fine, because it is true ; and because it carves 
men's faces as like men's faces as it can. 

And there are other people who will tell you that Greek 
art is fine because it is not true ; and carves a lion's skin so 
as to look not at alLlike a lion's skin. 

And you fancy that one or other of these sets of people 
must be wrong, and are perhaps much puzzled to find out 
which you should believe. 

But neither of them is wrong, and you will have eventu- 
ally to believe, or rather to understand and know, in recon- 
ciliation, the truths taught by each ; — but for the present, 
the teachers of the first group are those you must follow. 

It is they who tell you the deepest and usefullest truth, 
which involves all others in time. Greek art, and all other 
art, is fi?ie when it makes a man's face as like a man's face as 
it can. Hold to that. All kinds of nonsense are talked to 
you, now-a-days, ingeniously and irrelevantly about art. 
Therefore, for the most part of the day, shut your ears, and 
keep your eyes open : and understand primarily, what you 
may, I fancy, understand easily, that the greatest masters of 
all greatest schools — Phidias, Donatello, Titian, Velasquez, 
or Sir Joshua Reynolds — all tried to make human creatures 
as like human creatures as they could ; and that anything 
less like humanity than their work, is not so good as theirs. 

Get that well driven into your heads ; and don't let it 
out again, at your peril. 

163. Having got it well in, you may then farther under- 
stand, safely, that there is a great deal of secondary work 
in pots, and pans, and floors, and carpets, and shawls, and 



41 6 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

architectural ornament, which ought, essentially, to be un- 
like reality, and to depend for its charm on quite other 
qualities than imitative ones. But all such art is inferior 
and secondary — much of it more or less instinctive and 
animal, and a civilized human creature can only learn its 
principles rightly, by knowing those of great civilized art 
first— which is always the representation, to the utmost of 
its power of whatever it has got to show — made to look as 
like the thing as possible. Go into the National Gallery, 
and look at the foot of Correggio's Venus there. Correggio 
made it as like a foot as he could, and you won't easily find 
anything liker. Now, you will find on any Greek vase 
something meant for a foot, or a hand, which is not at all 
like one. The Greek vase is a good thing in its way, but 
Correggio's picture is the best work. 

164. So, again, go into the Turner room of the National 
Gallery, and look at Turner's drawing of " Ivy Bridge." 
You will find the water in it is like real water, and the 
ducks in it are like real ducks. Then go into the British 
Museum, and look for an Egyptian landscape, and you will 
find the water in that constituted of blue zigzags, not at all 
like water ; and ducks in the middle of it made of red 
lines, looking not in the least as if they could stand stuffing 
with sage and onions. They are very good in their way, 
but Turner's are better. 

165. I will not pause to fence my general principle 
against what you perfectly well know of the due contra- 
diction, — that a thing may be painted very like, yet painted 
ill. Rest content with knowing that it must be like, if it is 
painted well ; and take this farther general law : — Imitation 
is like charity. When it is done for love it is lovely ; when 
it is done for show, hateful. 

166. Well, then, this Greek coin is fine, first, because the 
face is like a face. Perhaps you think there is something 



THE HERCULES OF CAMARINA. 4 1 7 

particularly handsome in the face, which you can't see in 
the photograph, or can't at present appreciate. Uut there 
is nothing of the kind. It is a very regular, quiet, common- 
place sort of face ; and any average English gentleman's, 
of good descent, would be far handsomer. 

167. Fix that in your heads also, therefore, that Greek 
faces are not particularly beautiful. Of the much nonsense 
against which you are to keep your ears shut, that which 
is talked to you of the Greek ideal of beauty, is among the 
absolutest. There is not a single instance of a very beauti- 
ful head left by the highest school of Greek art. On coins, 
there is even no approximately beautiful one. The Juno of 
Argos is a virago ; the Athena of Athens grotesque ; the 
Athena of Corinth is insipid ; and of Thurium, sensual. 
The Siren Ligeia, and fountain of Arethusa, on the coins 
of Terina and Syracuse, are prettier, but totally without 
expression, and chiefly set off by their well-curled hair. 
You might have expected something subtle in Mercuries ; 
but the Mercury of Aenus is a very stupid-looking fellow, in 
a cap like a bowl, with a knob on the top of it. The 
Bacchus of Thasos is a drayman with his hair pomatumed. 
The Jupiter of Syracuse is, however, calm and refined ; and 
the Apollo of Clazomenae would have been impressive, if 
he had not come down to us much flattened by friction. 
But on the whole, the merit of Greek coins does not 
primarily depend on beauty of features, nor even, in the 
period of highest art, that of the statues. You may take 
the Venus of Melos as a standard of beauty of the central 
Greek type. She has tranquil, regular, and lofty features ; 
but could not hold her own for a moment against the 
beauty of a simple English girl, of pure race and kind 
heart. 

168. And the reason that Greek art, on the whole, bores 
you (and you know it does), is that you are always forced 



41 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

to look in it for something that is not there ; but which may 
be seen every day, in real life, all round you ; and which 
you are naturally disposed to delight in, and ought to 
delight in. For the Greek race was not at all one of 
exalted beauty, but only of general and healthy complete- 
ness of form. They were only, and could be only, beautiful 
in body to the degree that they were beautiful in soul (for 
you will find, when you read deeply into the matter, that 
the body is only the soul made visible). And the Greeks 
were indeed very good people, much better people than 
most of us think, or than many of us are ; but there are 
better people alive now than the best of them, and lovelier 
people to be seen now, than the loveliest of them. 

169. Then, what are the merits of this Greek art, which 
make it so exemplary for you ? Well, not that it is beauti- 
ful, but that it is Right. 1 All that it desires to do, it does, 
and all that it does, does well. You will find, as you 
advance in the knowledge of art, that its laws of self- 
restraint are very marvelous ; that its peace of heart, and 
contentment in doing a simple thing, with only one or two 
qualities, restrictedly desired, and sufficiently attained, are 
a most wholesome element of education for you, as opposed 
to the wild writhing, and wrestling, and longing for the 
moon, and tilting at windmills, and agony of eyes, and 
torturing of fingers, and general spinning out of one's 
soul into fiddlestrings, which constitute the ideal life of a 
modern artist. 

Also observe, there is entire masterhood of its business 
up to the required point. A Greek does not reach after 
other people's strength, nor out-reach his own. He never 
tries to paint before he can draw ; he never tries to lay on 
flesh where there are no bones ; and he never expects to find 
the bones of anything in his inner consciousness. Those 
1 Compare above, § 101. 



THE HERCULES OF CAMARINA. 419 

are his first merits — sincere and innocent purpose, 
strong common sense and principle, and all the strength 
that comes of these, and all the grace that follows on 
that strength. 

170. But, secondly, Greek art is always exemplary in 
disposition of masses, which is a thing that in modern days 
students rarely look for, artists not enough, and the public 
never. But, whatever else Greek work may fail of, you may 
be always sure its masses are well placed, and their placing 
has been the object of the most subtle care. Look, for 
instance, at the inscription in front of this Hercules of the 
name of the town — Camarina. You can't read it, even 
though you may know Greek, without some pains ; for 
the sculptor knew well enough that it mattered very little 
whether you read it or not, for the Camarina Hercules 
could tell his own story ; but what did above all things 
matter was, that no K or A or M should come in a wrong 
place with respect to the outline of the head, and divert the 
eye from it, or spoil any of its lines. So the whole inscrip- 
tion is thrown into a sweeping curve of gradually diminish- 
ing size, continuing from the lion's paws, round the neck, 
up to the forehead, and answering a decorative purpose as 
completely as the curls of the mane opposite. Of these, 
again, you cannot change or displace one without mischief : 
they are almost as even in reticulation as a piece of basket- 
work ; but each has a different form and a due relation to 
the rest, and if you set to work to draw that mane rightly, 
you will find that, whatever time you give to it, you can't 
get the tresses quite into their places, and that every tress 
out of its place does an injury. If you want to test your 
powers of accurate drawing, you may make that lion's mane 
your pons asinorum. I have never yet met with a student 
who didn't make an ass in a lion's skin of himself, when he 
tried it, 



420 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

171. Granted, however, that these tresses maybe finely 
placed, still they are not like a lion's mane. So we come 
back to the question, — if the face is to be like a man's face, 
why is not the lion's mane to be like a lion's mane? Well, 
because it can't be like a lion's mane without too much 
trouble ; — and inconvenience after that, and poor success, 
after all. Too much trouble, in cutting the die into fine 
fringes and jags ; inconvenience after that, — because fringes 
and jags would spoil the surface of a coin ; poor success 
after all, — because, though you can easily stamp cheeks 
and foreheads smooth at a blow, you can't stamp projecting 
tresses fine at a blow, whatever pains you take with your die. 

So your Greek uses his common sense, wastes no time, 
loses no skill, and says to you, " Here are beautifully set 
tresses, which I have carefully designed and easily stamped. 
Enjoy them ; and if you cannot understand that they mean 
lion's mane, heaven mend your wits." 

172. See then, you have in this work, well-founded knowl- 
edge, simple and right aims, thorough mastery of handicraft, 
splendid invention in arrangement, unerring common sense 
in treatment, — merits, these, I think, exemplary enough to 
justify our tormenting you a little with Greek Art. But it 
has one merit more than these, the greatest of all. It 
always means something worth saying. Not merely worth 
saying for that time only, but for all time. What do you 
think this helmet of lion's hide is always given to Hercules 
for ? You can't suppose it means only that he once killed 
a lion, and always carried its skin afterwards to show that 
he had, as Indian sportsmen send home stuffed rugs, with 
claws at the corners, and a lump in the middle which one 
tumbles over every time one stirs the fire. What zvas this 
Nemean Lion, whose spoils were evermore to cover Hercules 
from the cold ? Not merely a large specimen of Felis Leo, 
ranging the fields of Nemea, be sure of that. This Nemean 



THE HERCULES OF CAMARINA. 421 

cub was one of a bad litter. Born of Typhon and Echidna, 

— of the whirlwind and the snake, — Cerberus his brother, 
the Hydra of Lerna his sister, — it must have been difficult 
to get his hide off him. He had to be found in darkness 
too, and dealt upon without weapons, by grip at the throat 

— arrows and club of no avail against him. What does all 
that mean ? 

173. It means that the Nemean Lion is the first great 
adversary of life, whatever that may be — to Hercules, or 
to any of us, then or now. The first monster we have to 
strangle, or be destroyed by, fighting in the dark, and with 
none to help us, only Athena standing by, to encourage with 
her smile. Every man's Nemean Lion lies in wait for him 
somewhere. The slothful man says, there is a lion in the 
path. He says well. The quiet ?//;slothful man says the 
same, and knows it too. But they differ in their farther 
reading of the text. The slothful man says I shall be 
slain, and the unslothful, it shall be. It is the first ugly 
and strong enemy that rises against us, all future victory 
depending on victory over that. Kill it ; and through all 
the rest of life, what was once dreadful is your armor, and 
you are clothed with that conquest for every other, and 
helmed with its crest of fortitude forever more. 

Alas, we have most of us to walk bare-headed ; but that 
is the meaning of the story of Nemea, — worth laying to 
heart and thinking of, sometimes, when you see a dish 
garnished with parsley, which was the crown at the Ne- 
mean games. 

174. How far, then, have we got, in our list of the merits 
of Greek art now ? 

Sound knowledge. 
Simple aims. 
Mastered craft. 
Vivid invention. 



422 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Strong common sense. 

And eternally true and wise meaning. 

Are these not enough? Here is one more then, which 
will find favor, I should think, with the British Lion. Greek 
art is never frightened at anything, it is always cool. 

175. It differs essentially from all other art, past or 
present, in this incapability of being frightened. Half the 
power and imagination of every other school depend on a 
certain feverish terror mingling with their sense of beauty; — 
the feeling that a child has in a dark room, or a sick person 
in seeing ugly dreams. But the Greeks never have ugly 
dreams. They cannot draw anything ugly when they try. 
Sometimes they put themselves to their wits' end to draw 
an ugly thing, — the Medusa's head, for instance, — but 
they can't do it, — not they, — because nothing frightens 
them. They widen the mouth, and grind the teeth, and 
puff the cheeks, and set the eyes agoggling ; and the thing is 
only ridiculous after all, not the least dreadful, for there is 
no dread in their hearts. Pensiveness ; amazement ; often 
deepest grief and desolateness. All these; but terror never. 
Everlasting calm in the presence of all fate; and joy such as 
they could win, not, indeed, in a perfect beauty, but in 
beauty at perfect rest ! A kind of art this, surely, to be 
looked at, and thought upon sometimes with profit, even in 
these latter days. 

176. To be looked at sometimes. Not continually, and 
never as a model for imitation. For you are not Greeks ; 
but, for better or worse, English creatures ; and cannot do, 
even if it were a thousands times better worth doing, any- 
thing well, except what your English hearts shall prompt, 
and your English skies shall teach you. For all good art is 
the natural utterance of its own people in its own day. 

But, also, your own art is a better and brighter one than 
ever this Greek art was. Many motives, powers, and 



THE HERCULES OF CAMARINA. 423 

insights have been added to those elder ones. The very 
corruptions into which we have fallen are signs of a subtle 
life, higher than theirs was, and, therefore, more fearful in 
its faults and death. Christianity has neither superseded, 
nor, by itself, excelled heathenism ; but it has added its 
own good, won also by many a Nemean contest in dark 
valleys, to all that was good and noble in heathenism ; and 
our present thoughts and work, when they are right, are 
nobler than the heathen's. And we are not reverent enough 
to them, because we possess too much of them. That 
sketch of four cherub heads from an English girl, by Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, at Kensington, is an incomparably finer 
thing than ever the Greeks did. Ineffably tender in the 
touch, yet Herculean in power ; innocent, yet exalted in 
feeling ; pure in color as a pearl ; reserved and decisive in 
design, as this Lion crest, — if it alone existed of such, — if 
it were a picture by Zeuxis, the only one left in the world, 
and you built a shrine for it, and were allowed to see it only 
seven days in a year, it alone would teach you all of art that 
you ever needed to know. But you do not learn from this 
or any other such work, because you have not reverence 
enough for them, and are trying to learn from all at once, 
and from a hundred other masters besides. 

177. Here, then, is the practical advice which I would 
venture to deduce from what I have tried to show you. Use 
Greek art as a first, not a final, teacher. Learn to draw 
carefully from Greek work ; above all, to place forms cor- 
rectly, and to use light and shade tenderly. Never allow 
yourselves black shadows. It is easy to make things look 
round and projecting ; but the things to exercise yourselves 
in are the placing of the masses, and the modeling of the 
lights. It is an admirable exercise to take a pale wash of 
color for all the shadows, never reinforcing it everywhere, 
but drawing the statue as if it were in far distance, making 



424 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

all the darks one flat pale tint. Then model from those into 
the lights, rounding as well as you can, on those subtle con- 
ditions. In your chalk drawings, separate the lights from 
the darks at once all over ; then reinforce the darks slightly 
where absolutely necessary, and put your whole strength on 
the lights and their limits. Then, when you have learned to 
draw thoroughly, take one master for your painting, as you 
would have done necessarily in old times by being put into 
his school (were I to choose for you, it should be among six 
men only — -Titian, Correggio, Paul Veronese, Valasquez, 
Reynolds, or Holbein). If you are a landscapist, Turner 
must be your only guide (for no other great landscape 
painter has yet lived) ; and having chosen, do your best to 
understand your own chosen master, and obey him, and no 
one else, till you have strength to deal with the nature itself 
round you, and then, be your own master, and see with your 
own eyes. If you have got masterhood or sight in you, that 
is the way to make the most of them ; and if you have 
neither, you will at least be sound in your work, prevented 
from immodest and useless effort, and protected from vulgar 
and fantastic error. 

And so I wish you all, good speed, and the favor of 
Hercules and of the Muses ; and to those who shall best 
deserve them, the crown of Parsley first and then of the 
Laurel. 

ANNOTATIONS. 



Page 283, note. — Beller'ophon : a youth who was commanded 
by Iobat'es, king of Lycia, to destroy the Chimae'ra, a monster 
with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a dragon's tail. Athena 
gave him a golden bridle with which he was able to control the 
winged horse Pegasus, mounted upon which he swooped down 
upon the Chimaera, and vanquished the monster. 



ANNOTATIONS. 425 

2. Lerna : an allusion to the second great labor of Hercules, — 
the destruction of the seven-headed serpent, Hydra, that infested 
tlie marsh of Lerna. 

4. The Red Cross Knight: the allegorical representation of 
Holiness in the first book of Spenser's " Faery Queene." 

The Dragon: the form under which Spenser symbolize- Error 
with its numerous forms. 

Knight of the Garter: an order of honor instituted by King 
Edward III. 

George and the Dragon: St. George is the patron saint of 
England. He fought against the Saracens, and while in Libya 
killed a huge dragon to whom a damsel was daily given for food. 
Sahra, the king's daughter, whom he thus rescued, became his wife. 

9. Pindar: the greatest of Greek lyric poets. 

Aeschylus : the earliest of the three great tragic dramatists of 
Greece. 

11. Pros'erpine : daughter of Deme'ter (Ceres), goddess of 
agriculture, was stolen by Pluto, king of the lower world (Hades), 
and made his queen. There she had, as Perseph'one, control over 
the Furies, the avengers of murder. 

A demigod of agriculture : Triptol'emus, whose life had been 
saved by Deme'ter and who was taught by her the use of the 
plough, and who himself taught men to practice agriculture. 

12. Ne'reus : an old man of the sea, distinguished for his pro- 
phetic gifts, and his love of truth and justice. By the nymph Doris, 
In: became the father of fifty daughters, of whom Thetis was one. 

Leucothe'a: I no, wife of Athamas, who, to escape the insane 
fury of her husband, sprang, with her child Melicerfes in her 
arms, from a cliff into the sea. The gods made her a goddess of 
the sea under the name Leucothea, and her son a god under that 
of Palae'mon. 

The fountain Ar'ethuse : See Milton's Lyc'idas. According to 
the myth, Ar'ethusa, a sea-nymph, pursued by Alpheus, a sea-god, 
was rescued by plunging into the earth. She was carried over to 
Sicily, where she returned to earth in the shape of a fountain. 

Min'cius : a river of Italy, on whose banks the poet Virgil was 
born. 



426 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

13. Hephaes'tus : Vulcan, god of fire and the forge ; he presides 
over metallurgy. 

15. Par'thenon: the great temple of Pallas Athena which 
crowns the Acropolis of Athens. Athena is the tutelary deity of 
Athens. 

Gorgonian cold: the glance of the Gorgon Medusa turned into 
stone (icy death) all who looked upon her face. 

16. Ache of Heart: Achilles, hero of the " Iliad." 
Odys'seus: Ulysses, hero of the "Odyssey." 

1 7. Horace : a distinguished Latin poet, contemporary with 
Virgil. 

Chrysip'pus: a Greek philosopher of the Stoic school whose 
acutenesss obtained for him the designation of "the sword for the 
knot of academicians." 

Crantor: an academic philosopher and first commentator on 
Plato. He nourished at the close of the 4th century B.C. 

Hesiod : one of the earliest Greek poets, supposed to be a con- 
temporary of Homer. 

Keats : a gifted English poet of the first quarter of the present 
century. 

Reynolds and Gainsborough : great English portrait painters of 
the 1 8th century. 

18. Ae'olus: god of the winds. 

19. Dan'ae: mother of Perseus. She and her son were im- 
prisoned by her father, Acrisius, because an oracle had declared 
that the son of Danae would cause his grandfather's death. 

Diodorus : a Latin historian of the time of Caesar and Augustus. 

20. Boreas: the north wind. He carried off Oreithyia, beauti- 
ful daughter of the king of Attica. When the Athenians were in 
sore distress during a war with the Persians, they called on Boreas 
for aid, and a terrible north wind destroyed the Persian fleet. 
The grateful Athenians erected an altar to Boreas. 

Ilis'sus : a river of Attica. 

Harpies : foul creatures, with heads of maidens, and the bodies, 
wings, and claws of birds. Their office was to punish crime by 
defiling the food of their victims, or by carrying it off, or by 
devouring it. 



ANNOTATIONS. 427 

21. Charyb'dis: a whirlpool on the Sicilian side of the strait 
between Italy and Sicily : it was a great terror to sailors. Thrice 
each day the water rushed into the frightful chasm, and was thrice 
disgorged. 

22. Sirens: three sea-nymphs who, by their melodious singing, 
enticed sailors to their island, and then killed them. 

23. Tan'talus : a king of Phrygia who had been received at the 
table of the gods by his father Jupiter; but he attempted to 
deceive the gods into eating the roasted flesh of his own son, 
Pelops. The gods restored Pelops to life and punished Tantalus 
by consigning him to Tartarus, where he was afflicted with a 
raging thirst, which was forever unslaked, the waters of the lake 
in which he stood always receding when he stooped to drink. 

Panda'reos : he stole from the temple of Jupiter in Crete the 
golden dog that Vulcan had made, and carried it to Tantalus, 
who, when Jupiter demanded the dog, declared that it was not in 
his possession. 

Cerberus : a three-headed, serpent-tailed dog that guarded the 
wide gate of Hades-. 

" Facilis descensus": the descent (to hell) is easy. 

Icarius : an Athenian whom Bacchus taught to cultivate the 
vine. Some peasants having become intoxicated by wine which 
Icarius had given them, slew him, because they thought that he 
had poisoned them. Icarius was raised to the heavens and be- 
came the Star Arcturus, or Bootes. 

Actaeon : a famous hunter who was changed to a stag by 
Diana, and in that form was torn to pieces by his dogs. 

Hecuba: wife of Priam, king of Troy. She was taken captive 
by the Greeks, and according to Euripides, killed the children of 
a Greek who had caused the death of her last surviving son. 

Cynosar'ges : a gymnasium sacred to Hercules, outside Athens, 
for the use of those who were not of pure Athenian blood. 

24. Ar'temis : Diana, twin sister of Apollo ; a virgin goddess, 
the ideal of modesty, grace, and maidenly vigor. 

He'ra : Juno, queen of heaven, the type of matronly virtues and 
dignity. 

Aphrodit'e : Venus, goddess of love and beauty. 



428 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Polygnotus : a celebrated Greek painter belonging to the 5 th 
century B.C. 

Penelope : see Queens' 1 Gardens. 

25. Pro'teus : an attendant of Neptune. He had the gift of 
prophecy and the power of changing his shape at will. 

Hermes: Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods. 

26. Argus: the hundred-eyed giant whom Mercury lulled to sleep 
by his melodious telling of stories, and then killed him and released 
Io, who had been placed under his watch by Juno. His eyes were 
transferred to the tail of the peacock, which is sacred to Juno. 

" The herald Mercury ," etc. These lines are from Shakespeare's 
Hamlet. 

27. Di'omed: one of the Greek heroes who fought in the 
Trojan war. 

28. Autol'ycus : see Unto This Last. 

Hippom'edon : one of the Seven who fought against Thebes. 

29. Phrixus and Helle: children of Athamas and Neph/ele. 
To save them from the unkind treatment of I no, the second wife 
of Athamas, their mother put them on the back of a ram with 
golden fleece who carried them through the air across the Black 
Sea. On the way, Helle fell into the sea, which is called from her 
Hellespont. 

Salmo'neus : son of Aeolus, who was destroyed by Jupiter for 
his presumption in assuming equality with himself. 

Glaucus : grandson of Aeolus, whose fate was brought about by 
the anger of Venus. 

Sis'yphus : father of Glaucus and king of Corinth. He was 
fraudulent and avaricious and was punished in the lower world by 
being compelled to roll up hill a huge marble block, which, as 
soon as it reached the top, always rolled down again. 

Ixi'on : for wooing Juno, he was bound to a wheel which 
revolved constantly. 

Aristoph'anes : the greatest Greek writer of comedy. The 
" Clouds " is one of his best dramas. 

30. Sem'ele: a mortal maiden who was beloved by Jupiter. 
Jealous Juno induced her to gain Jupiter's consent to visit her in 
his god-like splendor. Sem'ele, unable to endure the dazzling 



ANNOTATIONS. 429 

sight, was consumed by the lightning, but she was made immortal 
by Jupiter. 

Perseus : son of Jupiter and Danae ; one of the most celebrated 
of Greek heroes, who slew the Gorgon Medusa while she was asleep. 

Gra'iae : three gray-haired witches with one eye between them, 
which they used in turn. By capturing this eve while it was pass- 
ing from one to another, Perseus compelled them to aid him in his 
search for Medusa. 

32. The Modern Athens : Edinburgh. 

Ares: Mars, god of war. 

Camilla : virgin queen of the Volscians, famous for her fleet- 
ness of foot. The line quoted is from Pope's Essay on Criticism. 

34. Menelaus : king of Lacedaemon and husband of Helen, 
whose abduction by Paris caused the Trojan war. 

Hector : the son of Priam and the flower of the Trojan heroes. 
He was killed by Achilles. 

37. Atrid'es : Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks in the Trojan 
war. 

Patro'clus : the friend of Achilles who was killed by Hector 
while he was fighting in the armor of Achilles. 

38. "A? so?io Aglatiro, chi divenne sasso": 'I am Aglaurus 
who became a stone.' 

Erichtho'nius : son of Vulcan. He was reared secretly by 
Minerva, who entrusted him to the care of the nymphs of the dew. 
They disobeyed Minerva's command and opened the chest in 
which he was concealed. On seeing the child in the folds of a 
serpent, they destroyed themselves. He is said to have introduced 
the worship of Minerva into Athens. 

Panathena'ic games : festivals held once in four years in honor 
of Minerva. 

Erechthe'um : a temple built by Erichthonius in honor of Minerva. 

The chief Agonia of humanity : see Luke xxii. 39-44. 

39. Aristotle : one of the greatest of Greek philosophers (384- 
322 B.C.). 

Magna Graecia : Great Greece, a name given to the southern 
districts of Italy which were inhabited by the Greeks. Tarentum 
was one of its principal cities. 



430 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

Ari'on : an ancient Greek bard and player on the Cithara, or 
harp. The story is that, having won valuable prizes in a musical 
contest, his life was threatened by the covetous sailors in whose 
vessel he was returning to Greece. He invoked the gods in 
heavenly strains and then threw himself into the sea. The song- 
loving dolphins rescued him, and carried him to Corinth in safety. 

Aeneas : son of Priam, king of Troy, and mythical founder of 
the Italian nation. 

Merlin : a great enchanter, who belongs to the stories of King 
Arthur. 

Laoc'oon : a Trojan priest who, with his two sons, was crushed 
to death by serpents. — See Virgil's "Aeneid," II. 201-227. 

Scylla : a dangerous rock on the strait of Messina, opposite the 
whirlpool of Charybdis. 

Polyphemus : chief of the race of giants called Cyclops, who 
had but one eye and that in the middle of the forehead. He dwelt 
in a cave near Mt. Aetna. Ulysses plied him with drink and then 
bored out his eye with the sharp point of a heated stick. 

Pentecost: see Acts ii. 2. 

41. Pan: god of woods and fields, of flocks and shepherds. 
He is said to have invented the shepherd's pipe or syrinx, upon 
which he played. 

Marsyas : a youth who, having picked up a flute dropped by 
Minerva, found himself able to make so sweet music that he dared 
to challenge Apollo to a musical contest. Having been vanquished, 
he was flayed alive by the wrathful Apollo. 

45. Pisistratus : An Athenian who seized the government of 
Athens, 560 B.C. Although a usurper, he was an able ruler. 

Antip'aros : an island of the Grecian Archipelago noted for a 
beautiful stalactite cave. 

46. St. Louis : Louis IX of France. 

The Cid : a popular hero of Spain, who distinguished himself in 
contests with the Moors. 

Chevalier Bayard : a French knight whose purity and honor, 
added to his distinguished service in war, led to his being con- 
sidered the beau-ideal of chivalry — the knight "without fear and 
without reproach." 



ANNOTATIONS. 43 1 



II. 



53. Ne'mean lion: a beast that devoured men, women, and 
children. Hercules grasped him by the throat and strangled him. 

The Python : a monster serpent that infested the region of Mt. 
Parnassus. It was slain by the arrows of Hercules. 

68. "Vanti Libia con sua rena": "Libya boasted with its 
sandy plain." 

69. Giganto-machia : war of the giants or Titans, who attempted 
to overthrow the power of Jupiter. 

70. Aesculapius : a mythical Greek physician whose healing 
power was so great that he offended Jupiter, who launched a 
thunderbolt at him, but afterwards made him an immortal ; some- 
times called the god of medicine. 

Hygie'ia : daughter of Aesculapius and goddess of health. 
72. Draconian : pertaining to Draco, a lawgiver of Athens, who 
imposed the death penalty for all offenses, great or small ; hence 
his laws are said to have been written in blood. 

75. '■•Laetuni siliqua quassante legumcn" : " The joyful pulse 
with rustling pod." 

78. " Rosa sempiterna, 

Che si dilata, rigrada, e ridole 
Odor di lode al Sol." 

" Rose eternal, which swells, expands, and sends its redolent 
incense towards the sun." 
82. "Giglio": lily. 
87. "Erba delta Madonna " = the plant sacred to the Virgin. 

91 . "Purfureos inter soles, el Candida lunae sidera " = Among 
the purple suns, and the white light of the moon. 

" Pro purpureo poenatn solvens scelerata capillo " = The 
wretch paying the penalty on account of her shining hair. 

92. Magenta: a shade of red tinged with purple, so named 
from the battle of Magenta, fought June 4, 1859, between the 
forces of Napoleon III and those of King Victor Emanuel. 

94. Ajax : one of the bravest of the Greeks who fought at the 
siege of Troy. The allusion is to the prayer of Ajax that the 



432 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. 

darkness, which prevented the Greeks from rescuing the dead body 
of Patroclus, might be dispelled. 

" Father Jove, deliver us 
From darkness ; clear the heavens and give our eyes 
Again to see. Destroy us if thou wilt, 
But O destroy us in the light of day ! " 

Iliad, Book XVII. — Bryant's Translation. 

Er'ebus : darkness — the name is applied to the dark, gloomy 
space under the earth. 

Pan'darus : a Lycian ally of the Trojans who aimed a shaft at 
Menelaus, husband of Helen, but failed to kill him. 

95. U A Rock more ?nighty" etc. Sinai. — See Exodus xix. 16. 

99. An altar to a God unknown : see Acts xvii. 23. 



103. Stonehenge: a collection of huge stones on Salisbury 
Plain, England ; supposed by some to be the remains of a druid- 
ical temple. 

Bill Sykes : a ruffian in Dickens's " Oliver Twist." 

The Dodger: the sobriquet given to a boy thief in the same 
book. 

105. Leonidas: the Spartan hero who fell resisting the Per- 
sians at Thermopylae. 

Valerius : a Roman general who won distinguished victories 
over the Gauls. 

Barbarossa (Redbeard) : Frederick I, emperor of Germany, 
who fought in the third crusade. 

Coeur de Lion : Richard I of England, surnamed " The lion- 
hearted," because of his great valor. 

Dandolo : a doge of Venice ; he was appointed to that office 
when he was over 80 years of age, yet in the administration of 
affairs, he displayed the force and vigor of youth. 

108. Giotto (Jotto): called the regenerator of Italian art ( 1 276- 
1337). His works reflect nature. 



ANNOTATIONS. 433 

For Michael Angela and Durer, sec notes on Fors Clavigera. 
i i 7. Dies Irae : Day of Wrath or Judgment. 
135. Aglaia's Cestus : the girdle of Aglaia, one of the Graces. 
" Null' altra fianta chc faccsse fronda 
O indurasse, puote aver vita? 

No other plant that pirtteth forth the leaf, 
Or that doth indurate, can there have life. 

Longfellow's Translation. 

The plant referred to is the rush, symbol of humility. 

137. "Lor via e lor fortuna" The way and the fortune. 

13S. Thomas Bewick: reviver of the art of wood-engraving in 
England (1 753-1 828). 

George Cruikshank: an English painter and caricaturist (1792- 
187S). 

140. Sebastian Bach : a great German musician and composer. 

155. Castaly: Castalia, a spring at the oracle of Apollo ; hence 
a divine fountain of poetry. 

157. Leonardo da Vinci : one of the greatest of Italian painters 
(1452-1519). The "Last Supper" is one of his most famous 
pictures. 

Luini: an Italian painter of the 16th century who is thought to 
have been a pupil of Da Vinci. 

159. Haydon (Benjamin Robert): an English painter (17S6- 
1846). 

Blake (Wm.): a great English artist and poet (1757-1827). 

172. Typhon : a monster with a hundred dragon heads. 

Echidna : a creature half serpent, half woman, who bore to 
Typhon, Cerberus, the Nemean lion, and the Lernean Hydra. 

1 76. Zeuxis : a Greek painter, distinguished for the felicity of 
his subjects and his masterly execution. 

177. Velasquez: a Spanish painter (1 599-1 660). 

Holbein : a German artist, distinguished as a historical and 
portrait painter, and as an engraver on wood. 

The crown of Parsley: a garland of parsley was the rew;ird of 
the victor in the Nemean and Isthmian games. 

Laurel : an emblem of victory in battle. 



The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, 
instruction, — I use the words with their weight in them, — intaking of 
stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes, and faiths. There is not an 
hour of it but is trembling with destinies, — not a moment of which, 
once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected 
blow struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of 
the furnace and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover 
that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown 
upon it ; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God's 
presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him — at least in 
this world. — Modern Painters. 



MR. RUSKIN AS A TEACHER. 



The great aim of all Mr. Ruskin's work has been to edu- 
cate the minds and hearts of the young everywhere by wise 
training and virtuous discipline. 

His belief that the function of art is moral, led him to aid 
actively in the establishing and conducting of a Working 
Men's College, in which he, personally, taught night classes 
in drawing for several years. It is said that, as a teacher, 
Mr. Ruskin was very engaging. His personal magnetism, 
combined with his enthusiasm and unselfish devotion to the 
work, gave him an almost unbounded influence over students. 
He always sought to incite them to effort by the highest 
motives, — a desire to make the most of their powers, and 
to do good work for its own sake, not from expectation of 
reward. In teaching classes in Drawing, he said that he 
would not have pupils study nature for the sake of learning 
to draw, but he would have them draw that they might learn 
to look at nature. 

The emphatic disapproval of the common idea that educa- 
tion is to be sought in order to rise in the world, expressed 
by him in " Sesame and Lilies," was confirmed by all his 
teaching. His object in teaching workmen was not to 
enable the few to become the masters of the many, but to 
lead them to the purest sources of pleasure, and to enable 
them to gain that power over their own minds and hands 
that genuine education always gives. 



436 RUSKIN AS A TEACHER. 

He did not sympathize with socialism, but he felt it to be 
of the utmost importance to arouse the educated wealthy 
and the higher classes to a sense of their duty towards the 
poor and the lowly born. This was the burden of his 
lectures to his Oxford classes. His biographer says 
that " he did useful work which none other could do in 
the university, and wielded an enormous influence for 
good." 

Ruskin's love of youth, and his willingness to give himself 
and his possessions in their service, is one of the striking 
characteristics of his whole life. 

" Ethics of the Dust," published in 1865, was the outcome 
of voluntary teaching on his part in a school for girls. It is 
intended as an illustration of a method by which the prin- 
ciples of the kindergarten system are carried out in the 
training of older classes. For the pupils of this school, Mr. 
Ruskin wrote verses full of deep thought and true feeling, 
which he set to music, educational in its power to develop 
pure moral emotion ; and he also devised dances to whose 
movements these verses should be sung. His ideas con- 
cerning the educational value of music .are set forth in 
"The Queen of the Heart." 

He believed that the " vital and joyful study of natural 
history " should be made a principal element in schools 
for all ages. By that means, he hoped to realize one of his 
fondest dreams : "that I may succeed in making some of 
you English youths like better to look at a bird than to 
shoot it, and even desire to make wild creatures tame, 
instead of tame creatures wild." He was always actuated 
by a desire to make the whole world sharers in his 
appreciative love of the beautiful ; and for the developing 
of the God-given powers into a high, pure, serviceable man- 
hood and womanhood, he felt that education should be, 
first of all, moral. 



RUSKIN S VIEWS ON EDUCATION. 437 

In all his teaching, Mr. Ruskin's effort has been to 
awaken in each soul the will to do the special work for 
which his own powers fitted him. " No true disciple of 
mine,"' he says, "will ever be a Ruskinian ; he will follow, 
not me, but the instinct of his own soul, and the guidance 
of its Creator." 



SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN'S WRITINGS, 

EXPRESSING HIS VIEWS OX EDUCATION. 

" Education does not mean teaching people to know 
what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave 
as they do not behave. It is not teaching the youth the 
shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers, and then leaving 
them to turn their arithmetic to roguery, and their literature 
to lust. It is, on the contrary, training them into the 
perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies and 
souls. It is a painful, continual, and difficult work, to be 
done by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and 
by praise, but, above all, — by example." 



" The main thing which we ought to teach our youth is to 
see something, — all that the eyes which God has given 
them are capable of seeing." 



" It might be matter of dispute what processes have the 
greatest effect in developing the intellect ; but it can hardly 
be disputed what facts it is most advisable that a man 
entering into life should accurately know. 



43^ RUSKIN AS A TEACHER. 

I believe, in brief, that he ought to know three things: — 

First. Where he is. — - That is to say, what sort of a 
world he has got into ; how large it is ; what kind of 
creatures live in it, and how ; what it is made of, and what 
may be made of it. 

Secondly. Where he is going. — That is to say, what 
chances or reports there are of any other world besides this. 

Thirdly. What he had best do under those circum- 
stances. — That is to say, what kind of faculties he pos- 
sesses ; what are the present state and wants of mankind ; 
what is his place in society ; and what are the readiest 
means in his power of attaining happiness and diffusing it. 
The man who knows these things, and who has had his will 
so subdued in the learning of them that he is ready to do 
what he knows he ought, I should call educated ; and the 
man who knows them not, — uneducated, though he could 
talk all the tongues of Babel." 



" The great leading error in modern times is the mistaking 
erudition for education. 

Education is the leading human souls to what is best, and 
making what is best out of them ; and these two objects are 
always attainable together, and by the same means ; the 
training which makes men happiest in themselves also makes 
them most serviceable to others. ... I believe every man 
in a Christian kingdom ought to be equally well educated. 
But I would have education to purpose : stern, practical, 
irresistible, in moral habits, in bodily strength and beauty, 
in all faculties of mind capable of being developed under 
the circumstances of the individual ; and especially in the 
technical knowledge of his own business." 



RUSKIX S VIEWS OX EDUCATION. 439 

" It would be part of my scheme of physical education 
that every youth in the State — from the king's son down- 
wards — should learn to do something finely and thoroughly 
with his hand, so as to let him know what touch meant ; 
and what stout craftsmanship meant; and to inform him of 
many things besides, which no man can learn but by some 
severely accurate discipline in doing." 



" Music was, among the Greeks, the first means of 
education ; and it was so connected with their system of 
ethics and of intellectual training that the God of Music is 
with them also the God of Righteousness. And the Greeks 
were incontrovertibly right in this. Music is the nearest at 
hand, the most orderly, the most delicate, and the most 
perfect of all bodily pleasures ; it is also the one which is 
equally helpful to all the ages of man." 



" Teaching of truth as a habit will be the chief work the 
master has to do ; and it will enter into all parts of educa- 
tion. First, you must accustom your children to close 
accuracy of statement ; this both as a principle of honor 
and as an accomplishment of language, making them try 
always who shall speak truest, both as regards the fact he 
has to relate or express, and as regards the precision of the 
words he expresses it in, thus making truth (which indeed 
it is) the test of perfect language, and giving the intensity of 
a moral purpose to the study and art of words : then carry- 
ing this accuracy into all habits of thought and observation 
also, so as always to think of things as they truly are, and to 
see them as they truly are, as far as in us rests." 



440 RUSKIN AS A TEACHER. 

" The last part of education will be — whatever is meant 
by that beatitude of the pure in heart — seeing God rightly. 
In all phases of education, the main point is that it should be 
a beatitude, and that a man should learn to rejoice rightly. 
This, then, is the sum of education. All literature, art, and 
science are vain, and worse, if they do not enable you to be 
glad ; and glad justly. And I feel it my duty to say that I 
believe our modern methods of teaching, and especially the 
institution of severe and frequent examination, to be abso- 
lutely opposed to this great end ; and that the result of 
competitive labor in youth is infallibly to make men know 
all they learn wrongly, and hate the habit of learning." 

" Of schools, in all places, and for all ages, the healthy 
working will depend on the total exclusion of the stimulus 
of competition in any form or disguise. Every child should 
be measured by its own standard, trained to- its own duty, 
and rewarded by its just praise. It is the effort that deserves 
praise, not the success ; nor is it a question for any student 
whether he is cleverer than others or duller, but whether he 
has done the best he could with the gifts he has. . . . 
Therefore, over the door of every school, and the gate of 
every college, I would fain see engraved the absolute 
Forbidding : — 

' Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory.' " 



" Science does its duty, not in telling us the causes of 
spots in the sun, but in explaining to us the laws of our own 
life, and the consequences of their violation. Art does its 
duty, not in filling monster galleries with frivolous, or dread- 
ful, or indecent pictures, but in completing the comforts and 
refining the pleasures of daily occurrence, and familiar 
service ; and literature does its duty, not in wasting our 



RUSKIN s VIEWS ON EDUCATION. 44I 

hours in political discussion, or in idle fiction, but in raising 
our fancy to the height of what may be noble, honest, and 
felicitous in actual life ; — in giving us, though we may our- 
selves be poor and unknown, the companionship of the 
wisest fellow-spirits of every age and country, — and in 
aiding the communication of clear thoughts and faithful 
purposes, among distant nations, which will, at last, breathe 
calm upon the sea of lawless passion, and change into such 
halcyon days the winter of the world, that the birds of the 
air may have their nests in peace, and the Son of Man 
where to lay his head." 



ADVERTISEMENTS 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 



21 



Hudson's Expurgated Shakespeare. 

For Schools, Clubs, and Families. Revised and enlarged Editions of 
twenty-three Plays. Carefully expurgated, with Explanatory Notes at 
the bottom of the page, and Critical Notes at the end of each volume. 
By H. N. Hudson, LL.D., Editor of The Harvard Shakespeare. One 
play in each volume. Square 16mo. Varying in size from 15 
pages. Mailing Price of each: Cloth, 50 cents; Paper, 35 cents. Intro- 
duction Price : Cloth, 45 cents; Paper, 30 cents Per set tin box), 
$12.00. (To Teachers, $10.00.) For list see next page. 

QOME of the special features of this edition are the convenient 
size and shape of the volumes ; the clear type, superior press- 
work, and attractive binding; the ample introductions: the ex- 
planatory notes, easily found at the foot of the page ; the critical 
notes for special study; the judicious expurgation, never mangling 
either style or story ; the acute and sympathetic criticism that has 
come to be associated with Dr. Hudson's name ; and, finally, the 
reasonableness of the price. 



Oliver Wendell Holmes: An edi- 
tion of any play of Shakespeare's to 
which Mr. Hudson's name is affixed 
does not need a line from anybody to 
commend it. 

Cyrus Northrop, President Uni- 
versity of Minnesota : They are con- 
venient in form and edited by Hud- 
son, — two good things which I can 
see at a glance. 

Hiram Corson, Prof, of Rhet. and 
Eng. Lit., Cornell University : I con- 
sider them altogether excellent. The 
notes give all the aid needed for an 
understanding of the text, without 
waste and distraction of the student's 
mind. The introductory matter to 
tLe several plays is especially worthy 
of approbation. 

C. F. P. Bancroft, Prin. of Phil- 
lips Academy, Andover, Mass.: Mr. 
Hudson's appreciation of Shake- 
speare amounted to genius. His 
editing accordingly exhibits more 
than learning and industry, — it re- 
veals insight, sympathy, and convic- 
tion Ho leaas the pupil into the 



very mind and heart of " the thou 
sand-souled Shakespeare." 

Byron Groce, Master in Public 
Latin School, Boston : The amended 
text is satisfactory; the typography 
is excellent; the notes are brief, al- 
ways helpful, not too numerous, and 
put where they will do the most good ; 
the introductions are vigorous, in- 
spiriting, keenly and soundly critical, 
and very attractive to boys, especially 
on account of their directness and 
warmth, for all boys like enthusi- 
asm. 

C. T. Winchester, Prof, of English, 
Wesleyan University : The notes and 
comments in tho school edition are 
admirably fitted to the need of the 
student, removing his difficulties by 
stimulating bis interest and quicken- 
ing his perception. 

George S. Hillard : His views, be 

tned righl or wrong, sound 

or unsound, arc unborrowed. They 

are coined in his own mint, and bear 

his image and superscription. 



22 HIGHER ENGLISH. 

The list is as follows : — 

*A Midsummer-Night's Dream. 3 *Henry the Eighth. 8 

*The Merchant of Venice. 1 *Romeo and Juliet. 3 

*Much Ado About Nothing. 3 * Julius Cassar. 1 

*As You Like It. 1 Twelfth Night. 1 *Hamlet.i 

*The Tempest. 2 The Winter's Tale. 2 *King Lear. 2 

King John. Richard Second. *Macbeth. 2 

Richard Third. 2 Antony and Cleopatra.? 

*Kenry Fourth, Part First. 1 *Othello. 3 
Henry Fourth, Part Second. 1 Cymbeline. 3 

Henry the Fifth. 2 *Coriolanus. 3 

Old Edition, paper, plays starred above. By mail, 20 cents ; for introduc- 
tion, 15 cents. 

Hudson's Three-Volume Shakespeare. 

For Schools, Families, and Clubs. With Introductions and Notes on 
each Play. 12mo. Cloth. 636-678 pages per volume. By mail, per 
volume, $1.40 ; for introduction, $1.25. The plays included in the three 
volumes respectively are indicated by figures in the above list. 

Shakespeare 's Complete Works. Harvard Edition. 

By Henry N. Hudson, LL.D. In Tivcntv Yolum.es, 12mo, two plays in 
each volume. Retail price: Cloth, $25.00; half calf, $55.00. Also in 
Ten Volum.es, of four plays each. Retail price: Cloth, $20.00; half 
calf, $40.00. 

Buyers should be careful not to confound the Harvard Shakespeare 
with an old edition made in 1851 and still sold by another house. 

rpHIS is pre-eminently the edition for libraries, students, and 
general readers. The type, paper, and binding are attractive 
and superior, and the introductions and notes represent the editor's 
ripest thought. 

The first volume contains the Burbage portrait and a life of the 
poet. The history of each play is given in its appropriate volume. 
The plays are arranged in three distinct series : Comedies, His- 
tories, and Tragedies ; and the plays of each series presented, as 
nearly as may be, in the chronological order of the writing. 

An obvious merit of this edition is that each volume has two 
sets of notes ; one mainly devoted to explaining the text, and 
placed at the foot of the page ; the other mostly occupied with 
matters of textual comment and criticism, and printed at the end 
of each play. The edition is thus admirably suited to the uses 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 



23 



both of the general reader and of the special student. General 
readers prefer to have explanations directly before them ; and in 
at least nine cases out of ten they will pass over an obscure word 
or phrase or allusion without understanding it, rather than look 
up the explanation in another volume or another part of the same 
volume. Often, too, in case the explanation be not directly at 
hand, they will go elsewhere in quest of it, and then find, after 
all, that the editor has left the matter unexplained ; whereas, with 
foot-notes, they will see at once how the matter stands, and will 
be spared the labor and vexation of a fruitless search. 

Mr. Hudson's notes are always h riginal, aiming to 

give the pupil such help as he needs for a thorough understanding 
of the poet's meaning rather than for the technical teaching of 
philology. It was always Mr. Hudson's wish to bring his students 
into close communion with the author. If he could accomplish 
that, his great object was secured, and anything that would tend 
to distract the attention of the pupil to foreign matters he con- 
sidered a very great mistake. While studying Shakespeare, his 
desire was to understand him, and not to make him the subject 
for the teaching of the English language. 



OPINIONS OF NOTED SHAKESPEARIANS. 



Horace Howard Furness : A noble 
edition, with happy mingle of illus- 
tration, explanation, and keen, sub- 
tle, sympathetic criticism. 

E. P. Whipple: Hudson's is the 
most thoughtful and intelligent in- 
terpretative criticism which has, 
during the present century, been 
written, either in English or German. 

Professor Dowden : Hudson's edi- 



tion takes its place beside the best 
work of English Shakespeare stu- 
dents. 

Dr. A. P. Peabody: I regard the 
edition as urn qualli d in Shakespear- 
ian scholarship, and in its worth in 
the library and for current use. 

Prof . C." T. Winchester : It seems 
to me, without question, the best 
edition now printed. 



Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare. 

By Henry N. Hudson, LL.D., Editor of The Harvard S 
In 2 vols. 12mo. 1003 pages. Uniform in size and biudiug with The 
Harvard Shakespeare. Retail prices: Cloth, $4.00; liall-calf, $8.00. 
Besides the topics mentioned in the title, (Ids work treats of the origin 
and growth oi the English drama and of Shakespeare's contempora ries. 



HIGHER ENGLISH. 25 

English Literature Pam phlets. 

A LL of these are printed in good type, on good paper, and have 

been judiciously annotated for the use of students. All are of 

12mo size. The first of the prices given below is the mailing price, 

and the second the introductory. The name of the editor is in 

brackets. 

Burke. [Hudson.] 

I. Five Speeches and ten Papers. 20 cents ; 15 cents. 

II. Life. A Letter to a Noble Lord, and eleven Extracts. 20 cents; 
15 cents. 
Webster. [Hudson.] 

I. Reply to Hayne, and six Extracts. 20 cents ; 15 cents. 

II. Life, and extracts from twenty -five Speeches. 20 cents ; 15 cents. 
Webster. [Montgomery.] First Bunker Hill Address, with Life. 12 

cents ; 10 cents. 
Bacon. [Hudson.] Life, and Extracts from thirty Essays. 20 cents; 

15 cents. 
Wordsworth. [Hudson.] 

I. Life. The Prelude, and thirty -three Poems. 20 cents ; 15 cents. 

II. Sixty Poems and Sonnets. 20 cents ; 15 cents. 
Coleridge and Burns. [Hudson.] Lives, and forty-five Poems. 20 

cents ; 15 cents. 
Coleridge. [Hudson.] The Ancient Mariner. 6 cents ; 5 cents. 
Addison and Goldsmith. [Hudson.] Lives, fifteen Papers from Addi- 
son, eleven Prose Selections from Goldsmith, with The Deserted 

Village. 20 cents ; 15 cents. 
Macauiay. [Montgomery.] Essay on Clive, with Life. 20 cents; 15 cents. 
Macauiay. [Montgomery.] Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham, 

with Life. 20 cents ; 15 cents. 

Craik's English of Shakespeare. 

Illustrated in a Philological Commentary on Julius Caesar. By George 
L. Craik, Queen's College, Belfast. Edited, from the third revr 
London edition, by W. J. Rolfe, Cambridge, Mass. 12mo. Cloth. 4GG 
pages. Mailing Price, $1.00; Introduction, 90 cents. 

A N" exposition in regard both to the language or style of 

speare, and to the English language generally. 



Shakspere's Versification. 



Notes on Shakspere's Versification, with Appendix on the Verse Tests 
and a short Descriptive Bibliography. By George H. Browne. A.M. 
12mo. Paper. 34 pages. Price, interleaved, 25 cents. 



CLASSICS FOR CHILDREN. 



Choice Literature ; Judicious Notes ; Large Type ; Firm 
Binding ; Low Prices. 



Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. 

* First Series: Supplementary to the Third Reader. 

* Second Series: Supplementary to the Fourth Reader. 
*/Esop 's Fables, with selections from Krilof and La Fontaine. 
*Kingsley's Water-Babies : A story for a Land Baby. 
*Ruskin's King of the Golden River: A Legend of Stiria. 
*The Swiss Family Robinson. Abridged. 

Robinson Crusoe. Concluding with his departure from the island. 
*Kingsley's Creek Heroes. Francilfon's Gods and Heroes. 

Lamb 's Tales from Shakespeare. " Meas. for Meas." omitted. 

Scott's Tales of a Grandfather. 
*Martineau's Peasant and Prince. 

Banyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 

Scott's Lady of the Lake. Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

Lamb's Adventures of U/ysses. 

Tom Brown at Rugby. Lord Chesterfield's Letters. 

Church 's Stories of the Old World. 

Scott's Talisman. Complete. 

Scott's Quentin Durward. Slightly abridged. 

Irving 's Sketch Book. Six selections, including '• Rip Van Winkle." 

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. 

Scott's Guy Mannering. Complete. 

Scott's Ivanhoe. Complete. Scott's Rob Roy. Complete. 

Johnson 's Rassefas, Prince of Abyssinia. 

Gulliver's Travels. The Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag. 

Plutarch 's Lives. From Clough's Translation. 

Irving-Fiske's Washington and His Country. 

Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. 
*Franklin: His Life by Himself. 

Selections from Ruskin. 
'ale's Arabian Nights. Heroic Ballads. 

Grote and Segur's Two Great Retreats. 

Irving' s Alhambra. Selections for Memorizing. 

Scott's M arm ion. Scott's Old Mortality. 

Oon Quixote. Thoughts of Marcus Aurellus Antoninus. Epictetus. 



Starred books are illustrated. 



CINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 

BOSTON, NEW YORK. AND CHICAGO. 



BOOKS IN HIGHER ENGLISH. 



Introd. Price. 

Alexander: Introduction to Browning $1.00 

Athenaeum Press Series : 

Cook: Sidney's Defense of Poesy 80 

Gummere: Old English Ballads 00 

Schelling: Ben Jonson's Timber 80 

Baker: Plot-Book of Some Elizabethan Plays 00 

Cook: A First Book in Old English . . . . 1.50 

Shelley's Defense of Poetry 50 

The Art of Poetry 1.12 

Hunt's What is Poetry ? 50 

Newman's Aristotle's Poetics 30 

Addison's Criticisms on Paradise Lost 1.00 

Bacon's Advancement of Learning 00 

Corson: Primer of English Verse 1.00 

Emery: Notes on English Literature 1.00 

English Literature Pamphlets: Ancient Mariner, .05; First 
Banker Hill Address, .10; Essay on Lord Clive, 
.15; Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham, .15; 
Burke, I. and II. ; Webster, I. and II. ; Bacon ; 
Wordsworth, I. and II.; Coleridge and Burns; 

Addison and Goldsmith Each .15 

Fulton & Trueblood : Practical Elocution Retail 1.50 

Choice Readings, $1.50; Chart of Vocal Expression . 2.00 

College Critic's Tablet 60 

Garnett: English Prose from Elizabeth to Victoria .... 1.50 

Gayley : Classic Myths in English Literature 1.50 

Genung: Outlines of Rhetoric 1.00 

Elements of Rhetoric, $1.25; Rhetorical Analysis , 1.12 

Gummere : Handbook of Poetics 1.00 

Hudson : Harvard Edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works : — 

20 Vol. Ed. Cloth, retail, $25.00; Half-calf, retail . 55.00 

10 Vol. Ed. Cloth, retail, $20.00; Half-calf, retail . 40.00 

Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare. 2 vols. Cloth, 4.00 

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Text-Book of Poetry ; Text-Book of Prose . . Each 1.25 

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Maxcy: Tragedy of Hamlet 45 

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Newcomer : Practical Course in English Composition 80 

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Sherman : Analytics of Literature 1.25 

Smith : Synopsis of English and American Literature ... .80 

Sprague : Milton's Paradise Lost and Lycidas ...... .45 

Thayer: The Best Elizabethan Plays 1.25 

Thorn : Shakespeare and Chaucer Examinations 1.00 

White : Philosophy of American Literature 30 

Whitney: Essentials of English Grammar 75 

Whitney & Lockwood : English Grammar 70 

Winchester : Five Short Courses of Reading in English Literature, .40 

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